Our Sessions

The Gamification of Asset Management

Pre-Conference Workshop
Sunday, June 12 at 9 a.m. CDT

The team is huddled in the locker room and about to take the field. Do the players know their role and understand the game plan? Do they have a sense of the opponents they will be facing and how to minimize their vulnerabilities? Will the consistent patterns the team practiced in the playbook be effective in the game? Will they be able to learn from their efforts to improve how they play in the next game? Will they be able to put points on the board and win the game?

This workshop centers on the premise that most successful Asset Management (AM) programs center upon building a strong team atmosphere where action on the field serves as the basis for learning and improving. Using an interactive facilitation approach that includes brief presentations and group exercises, attendees will be led through five stages of AM maturity: innocence, awareness, understanding, competence, and excellence. The backdrop for moving through each of the stages will orient around a “team sports” analogy using terms and examples that can be easily applied and transferred back to utility scenarios. Attendees will walk away with not only a clearer sense of their own program and practical steps they can take to improve it, but also gain perspective from other utility case examples and expert guidance and insight.

A Resilient Utility Starts with Digital Transformation

Monday, June 13 at 2 p.m. CDT

Utilities continue to face an ever-growing list of challenges. Environmental factors, such as climate change, impact the availability of water. Social factors, such as population growth, cause increased demand of water resulting in wear and tear on aging infrastructure. And, more recently, employees entering retirement with a lack of qualified available talent to backfill positions have led to workforce shortages. All of this, while constantly managing competing financial pressures, can take vital resources away from utility innovation

In this session, you will hear from subject matter experts on how a digital approach works to create a comprehensive and connected system that addresses your biggest challenges across the entire water network.

Real-Time Software for Distribution System Operations: An Operator-Focused Design Approach

Tuesday, June 14 at 2:30 p.m. CDT

Metro Water Services (MWS) is a department of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville & Davidson County that provides drinking water, among other sewer, stormwater, and waste services, to an area of 402 square miles with an estimated population > 700,000. MWS has a vast and complex water distribution system. MWS partnered with Xylem to develop a real-time hydraulic and water quality distribution system decision support tool to aid in these efforts. Xylem’s Water Network Optimization solution provided the opportunity to optimize the water distribution operation efforts by employing a flexible and configurable “live” water modeling solution that is tailored to Nashville’s infrastructure assets.

Diagnosing a Metallic Water Main’s Serviceability using Inline Ultrasonic Technology

Tuesday, June 14 at 3 p.m. CDT

Pure Technologies conducted an inline ultrasonic pipe wall inspection of the pipeline to target the extents of any needed rehabilitation efforts of the Quivira Road Water Main, owned and operated by WaterOne. The 30-inch diameter ductile iron pipe (DIP) water main that spans for 3.6 miles is a critical artery in their water distribution system. This paper/presentation will summarize the operational and level-of-effort aspects of the inspection, including pipeline preparation, pipeline operation, and technology deployment. The structural analysis, finite element analysis, recommended pipeline management approach, validation process, and lessons learned on the project will be addressed in detail.

Keeping an Eye and an Ear on the Big Inch

Tuesday, June 14 at 4 p.m. CDT

The “Big Inch” 108-inch Susquehanna Raw Water Supply is a critical water asset owned and operated by the City of Baltimore (COB) that runs parallel to Interstate 95 in Maryland. With the Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) undertaking expansion of express toll lanes along I-95 north of Baltimore from 2017 to 2026, the Big Inch was at increased risk of damage from heavy construction. The COB needed to protect the prestressed concrete cylinder pipe (PCCP) main, and developed COB PCCP Protection Guidelines requiring MDTA contractors to perform Wire Break Monitoring. Pure Technologies developed a custom-built wire break monitoring solution to locally monitor the PCCP main just for the duration of MDTA construction, currently named Marigold.

Renew, Replace, or Retrofit? Getting Strategic with Meter Asset Management on the Path toward AMI

Wednesday, June 15 at 2:30 p.m. CDT

WaterOne is an independent public utility serving a population of about 440,000 in Johnson County, Kansas. Their paramount goal is delivering fresh, clean water to 151,000 service connections. With the target of enhancing customer service and gaining operational efficiency, WaterOne began an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) deployment in 2019. As they made the reading technology leap, WaterOne had to consider how to handle the vast quantity of metering assets in the field. Their meter base is a mix of different manufacturers and vintages – the bulk of which had useful life remaining. WaterOne sought out an AMI solution that could avoid premature replacement of these assets by allowing for retrofitting of existing meters with radios, as well as reconfiguration of the register resolutions over the network. This presentation will explore WaterOne’s strategic approach to meter asset management during their AMI deployment. Specifically, we will address meter replacement, reconfiguration, and retrofit, technology selection, improvements in business process, lifecycle analysis, cost savings, and data validation.

Advanced Asset Management Tools for Large Meter Revenue Assurance

Wednesday, June 15 at 3:30 p.m. CDT

Large meters in commercial and industrial services typically represent 10% of a utility’s meter population but can account for 40-60% of a utility’s revenue. Due to the importance of maintaining accuracy on each and every high consumption meter, advanced programs are imperative to a utility’s revenue assurance. Applying data science to existing network data can help utilities determine questionable assets throughout the distribution network. Armed with this information, utilities can proactively create asset management plans and better testing programs to ensure revenue assurance and feel confident in the health and continued accuracy of their network.