The Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) is one of the largest water and wastewater utilities in the United States, serving over 1.8 million residents across a 1,000 square mile area. WSSC is responsible for over 5,700 miles of water distribution pipes and 5,500 miles of sewer collection pipes.
THE CHALLENGE
- Incorporating hydraulic performance in the Asset Management Program decision-making process.
- Solution needed to streamline the asset management process by balancing the capital cost of pipe replacement, business risk exposure, and level of service.
THE SOLUTION
The OptimizerTM platform allows System Asset Strategy Managers at WSSC to identify system needs and develop solutions that fully leverage their asset data and hydraulic models for both asset management and strategic planning. Assets are now prioritised for maintenance, replacement, or upsising on a comprehensive multi-objective, multi-criteria basis. These analyses provide a transparent, unified approach to asset management and capital and operational planning, ultimately providing more confidence in the decisions being made by WSSC.
RESULTS
OptimizerTM empowered WSSC to integrate their hydraulic model with asset management data for the first time, which has provided valuable insights on how to prioritise their investment. The resulting analysis revealed that replacement strategies can be significantly different when considering hydraulic impacts.
– Adolfo Carpio, Asset Strategy Manager, Wastewater Network, WSSCBy combining our hydraulic model with our asset management data, OptimizerTM allowed us to gain valuable insights into our Asset Management Program (AMP) decision-making which would not have been possible looking at them in isolation.
