Asset Management Fundamentals
Prepare Utilities for American Water
Infrastructure Act Compliance
A Colorado utility case study
By Simon Watson, CMRP, Ricardo Campos, P.E., and Greg Chol, P.E.
UTILITIES ACROSS THE UNITED STATES ARE DEVELOPING OR UPDATING RISK AND
Resiliency Assessments (RRAs) and Emergency Response Plans (ERPs) to comply with the
American Water Infrastructure Act (AWIA) of 2018—the most far-reaching changes to the
Safe Drinking Water Act in more than 20 years. Providing critical water and wastewater
services to 60,000 customers across Commerce City, Colorado, South Adams County Water
and Sanitation District (SACWSD) needs to comply with AWIA by December 31, 2020. As SACWSD
works to improve data management to better inform decisions, its recent investment in an asset
management (AM) program is not only helping it prioritize improvements and investments, but also
comply with AWIA and increase reliability across its system.
Before implementing its asset management program in 2017,
SACWSD had a limited ability to track asset information and
equipment history that was needed for future planning. Pre-viously,
SACWSD had looked to historical knowledge and
past experiences to identify critical assets. However, assets
really need to be viewed from a risk perspective (i.e., the con-sequence
of failure multiplied by the likelihood of failure) to
identify critical assets and determine where a utility is most
at risk. When assessing a utility, it should also be evaluated
holistically in order to efficiently prioritize the critical assets
at highest risk.
A desktop evaluation is a quick way to identify the assets
that have the highest consequence of failure, determine the
likelihood of failure, incorporate historical knowledge of
the plan and consider recent or planned maintenance, and
20 | ROCKY MOUNTAIN WATER MAY 2020
FEATURE
/jdvequipment.com
