Article
Take charge of your assets
Are you sometimes so busy putting out fires that you lose sight of long-term planning? Then you are not alone. Many water utilities experience difficulties optimising operations because they are busy with urgent tasks, such as handling alarms, searching for leaks and repairing pipe bursts and other worn-out infrastructure.
However, a lack of long-term planning ultimately leads to higher repair and maintenance expenses, because fixing a problem that has already occurred is often more expensive than preventing it. For instance, undetected leaks may turn into pipe bursts requiring urgent repairs, causing revenue loss and inconvenience for your customers, and ultimately damaging your public image.
Furthermore, unpredictable maintenance and repair expenses make it difficult to plan your budget and your resources with overtime payment as a result.
Effective asset management is crucial to keeping repair costs low and staying on top of your budget.
How many pipe breaks could you prevent by replacing 1% of your pipes?
Many water utilities replace about 1% of their pipes every year. By benchmarking consumption against historic data, a large American water utility realised that 24% of their pipe breaks were located in 1% of the pipes.
In other words, this water utility was able to prevent 24% of their pipe breaks by utilising data to prioritise which 1% of their pipes to renew.
Solution: Utilise historic data to predict and prevent future issues
The key to effective asset management is knowing the rhythm of your water network. Only then are you able to identify anomalous situations and act on them.
The first thing to do is to establish a baseline by monitoring key parameters in your network with intelligent detectors and machine learning. Once a baseline is established, you can detect deviations from it, which will help you prioritise where to focus your attention and efforts to prevent future problems.
Effective asset management is crucial to keeping repair costs low and staying on top of your budget.