April 4, 2019

Taking AIM At Asset Management

Presented at the Texas Water conference in Houston by Allison Blake, Freese and Nichols, and John Logan, Trinity River Authority.

The Trinity River Authority (TRA) has taken aim at asset management by implementing a system wide asset management program at each of their facilities in North Texas, which has soared TRA to new heights with asset management. The Asset Inventory and Management (AIM) project will implement asset management at their water treatment plant, Tarrant County Water Supply Project, and four of their wastewater treatment plants: Denton Creek, Mountain Creek, Red Oak, and Ten Mile Creek Regional Wastewater System.

This project builds on TRA’s asset management initiative with the GIS Asset Based Inventory (GABI) project at the Central Regional Wastewater System (CRWS) that was developed from 2015 to 2018. The GABI project set the baseline of implementing asset management projects and programs at their other facilities. As part of the project start-up meeting, TRA team members demonstrated the GABI geodatabase and mapping features, along with the synchronization between GIS and their computerized maintenance management system (CMMS).

This project hit the ground running as the framework from the GABI project is there to be implemented for each of the other facilities. There will be a geodatabase design for each system, data capture plan, GIS to Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) synchronization, and collection of asset data. The lessons learned and project optimization from the GABI project are being implemented with the AIM project, including improving the survey and collection of asset data in the field and the quality control and collaboration of populating asset information.  One challenge in the AIM project is that each water and wastewater system have separate budgets and different levels of funding. This project utilizes a public-private partnership approach to maximize the number of assets captured at each facility.

By developing GIS maps with treatment plant asset data, TRA has a window into their asset information and determine the status of the assets at their facilities. The maps will then sync with the CMMS  to show where assets are located that need to be maintained or repaired, allowing TRA to improve their maintenance processes and the life of their assets.

Authors:

• John Logan, Trinity River Authority
• Julia J. Hunt, Trinity River Authority
• Allison Blake, Freese and Nichols
• Jessica Brown, Freese and Nichols

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