National Water and Wastewater Asset Management Readiness Survey
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Core infrastructure such as water and wastewater systems provide essential services to communities. Nevertheless, municipalities sometimes struggle to make the necessary investments to keep the physical assets in an adequate condition and operating efficiently.
The transformative tools of asset management can change the water industry by creating a new mindset for capital investments. Canadian municipalities have understood how asset management can positively impact business and are strongly adopting this practice.
New asset management regulations and guidelines are constantly being released in Canada, but there is little information on how municipalities are implementing these practices. For this reason, the University of Waterloo graduate student Anelisa Schmidt and her supervisor Dr. Mark Knight have developed an Asset Management Readiness survey to better understand and benchmark current water and wastewater infrastructure asset management practices in Canada.
This Master thesis research project is developed with financial support provided by the Centre for Advancement of Trenchless Technology (CATT) and the Southern Ontario Water Consortium (SOWC). CATT plans to annually conduct this survey so change over time in industry practices can be monitored.
Survey data will also support policy makers interested in developing new asset management policies and guidelines that will help improve asset management practices and at the same time will reduce water and wastewater infrastructure deficits.
The survey is designed to be answered by municipality's asset managers in 30 to 60 minutes. Thirty (30) out of the fifty-three (53) questions have the purpose of placing the municipality on a readiness scale. Therefore, the main benefit for each survey participant is the opportunity to benchmark your organization’s Asset Management Readiness Score against the aggregated responses from water utilities of similar size ? after all data is collected and compiled.
Respondents can complete the survey in parts or modify it at any time, as all responses are automatically saved from the last access. All survey responses are strictly confidential, will only be displayed publicly in an aggregated format and used for research purposes.
We invite municipal asset management practitioners to fill out the Water and Wastewater Asset Management Readiness survey.
Links:
If you work in Ontario: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/AMreadinessCWWA
If you work in any other province in Canada: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NAMreadinessCWWA
Should you have any questions or concerns about this survey please contact Dr. Mark Knight (mark.knight@uwaterloo.ca).
We appreciate your consideration and participation in this survey.
