INFRA 2014
1er au 3 décembre, Palais des Congrès, Montréal
Titre anglais : Optimizing Physical Condition Assessment Dollars Using Statistical Results
Biographies des conférenciers : Annie Vanrenterghem-Raven, InfraPLAN et Kurt Vause, Anchorage Water Wastewater Utility
Ms. Annie Vanrenterghem-Raven, PhD, is the Owner and Managing Director of infraPLAN, a NYC-based firm she created in 2008 that helps water utilities create Asset Management programs. The goal is to, ultimately, identify and justify long-term investments, and select short-term projects based on risk. Prior to starting infraPLAN she was an Associate Research Professor at NYU School of Engineering working closely with EU-based research labs. For the last 18 years, Ms. Raven’s research and consulting work has focused on advanced analytical approaches, allowing utilities to use and analyze their own data and create plans that are therefore analytical, risk-based and utility-specific. Ms Raven’s undergraduate education is in Math and Physics; she holds a Master’s degree in Structural Eng. from ESTP, Paris, France; an MPH in Environmental Sciences from Columbia U, and a PhD in Civil Eng. from NYU. She is a member of AWWA’s AM Committee where she chairs the abstract sub-committee.
Mr. Kurt Vause’s experience includes 15 years public service as the Engineering Director of Anchorage, Alaska Water and Wastewater Utility (AWWU) where he was responsible for AWWU’s capital construction program, Strategic Asset Services and Planning. He supervises 37 professional and technical staff. Prior to joining AWWU, Mr. Vause spent 19 years as a Consulting Civil and Environmental Engineer. Mr. Vause served as a Board Director of WEF, and international scientific, educational and professional organization of water and wastewater professionals with 36,000 members worldwide, Alaska Section Director of AWWA, a non-profit scientific and educational organization dedicated to public health and safe drinking water with over 50,000 members world-wide. Currently, Mr. Vause serves:on AWWA’s Water Utility Council (WUC), on AWWA’s governing council for national legislative and regulatory affairs associated with drinking water issues (regulatory Sub-committee Chair), on a project steering committee member for the 2012 IWA/Water Supply Association of Australia Asset Management Benchmarking & Improvements Project and as AWWA’s Asset Management Committee Vice Chair.
Résumé de la conférence
While considerable research and development has occurred in the area of water main condition assessment technologies, widespread adoption remains elusive. The water community experiences difficulties applying condition assessment in an economically efficient way. Impediments include:
- Budgeting issues (too expensive, too uncertain results)
- Lack of planning and leveraging « cheap » information, mining existing utility data
- Need for better justification and capitalization of condition assessment
- Confusion about what condition assessment means, how to apply myriad technologies within the marketplace
- Adoption of condition assessment by utilities in a reactive way, after having suffered spectacular failures
Utility data (e.g., break history, pipe and environmental characteristics) provides valuable and affordable baseline ‘condition performance’ knowledge; that data can be used to identify top candidates for replacement and upgrade, and create a cost efficient physical condition assessment program.
The Director of Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility (AWWU) will describe how his utility overcame the challenges. AWWU owns, operates, and maintains a 830-mi pipe network, mostly cast iron or ductile iron with an average age of 32 years. Because of increasing water main failures, AWWU was systematically replacing mains using age (38-years) as a trigger. Facing the need to limit, better target and justify expenses, in 2011, AWWU embarked on a new approach: it started to evaluate the likelihood of failure of water mains using statistical approaches, and then estimate when it was economically optimal to replace mains (based on risk). This allowed AWWU to determine candidates for further physical condition assessment using a combination of PICA’s Remote Field Technology, traditional CCTV, and coupons lab testing, and ultimately make and justify replacement and upgrade investment decisions. The factors affecting economic viability of the condition inspection technologies deployed were analyzed and integrated in the decisions.
In this presentation the authors show how statistical, and field and lab physical condition assessment approaches can be combined to lead to a cost efficient and defensible rehabilitation and replacement plan. The main focus of this paper and presentation will be on cost, results of inspection and statistical analyses, and the economic value created through validation of statistical evaluation of pipe performance using condition assessment.
