Meg Riley
Do you have a goal to further develop your strategy for pipe inspection, condition evaluation, risk assessment, capital investment, or implementation planning? We have an asset management solution for every utility to help collaborative asset teams deliver actionable asset condition and risk planning in the cloud, enabling more productivity from the field to the office. Here are three things to focus on to improve your risk assessment strategy.
1. Plan for potential future risks or failures
To stay ahead of any pipe failures or breaks, and to secure funding for long-term rehab, planning for 20 or 40 years in the future is necessary. It isn’t wise to only look two to five years ahead. The latest in asset management software can help you determine business risk exposure accurately from likelihood and consequence of failure calculations, while keeping your risk updated based on the latest inspection and asset condition data.
2. Conduct deliberate risk assessment
Need a more intentional process for forecasting and rehab? With centralized cloud-based risk planning, you can access a risk matrix feature, which provides a clear visual representation for your utility to prioritize pipe repair and replacement. You can build your strategic plan by prioritizing renewal and replacement based on color symbology, helping you distinguish between assets that need immediate attention and those with lower priority.
3. Strengthen asset and budget planning
Do you know exactly where to allocate your capital and operation and maintenance budgets to maximize your asset lifecycle? Our asset management tool enables you to pull all necessary data into the platform and use it to evaluate risk within the system. From that populated data, you can develop a rehab action plan and make accurate cost projections for additional funding.
Follow in the footsteps of other utilities
Viewing all of your inspection and risk planning data in one place is key. When you use one platform to leverage assets, condition, and risk data to prioritize cleaning, repairs, replacements, and further inspections, communication from the office to the field is more efficient, helping build productivity among your team and complete projects faster.
If you’re ready to accomplish all three of these goals, you can learn from the excellent example set by Seattle Public Utilities. With the median age of their pipes sitting at 80 years old, they undertook a massive effort to be more proactive and holistic with their asset management practices. Read about how they went from forecasting only one or two years ahead to creating a master plan that priortizes where they want to be in 10 to 40 years.
Want to know more? Let us walk you through a typical workflow and show you how we advise public utilities and private companies about the best way to create an asset prioritization master plan.