Wise Water Words - Volume 51, Issue 1 (Spring 2014)
Chair's Column
By David Lathrop [Nebraska Department of Roads]All organizations must take time to reflect on where they have been where they are now and how they are going to meet the opportunities and challenges that are coming. Water is in the news. As an all volunteer section, meeting those challenges poses an exceptional personal commitment. The rewards for that commitment are manifold ranging from the satisfaction of helping others to the personal connection to colleagues to professional growth through leadership. There are plenty of opportunities to serve either as an officer or as a committee chair or member. Please join us in making a difference.
In order to sustain and energize our section, as chair I have proposed three initiatives for the 2014 year of service. The first initiative is to align our section strategic goals and deliverables with national AWWA's new strategic goals. The second initiative is to establish a template bank of SOPs (standard operating procedures) policy statements and guideline documents for water/wastewater utilities. The third initiative is to benchmark key performance indicators with similarly-sized utilities across Nebraska.
The third initiative is the most ambitious in terms of scope. The third goal begins by identifying key performance indicators and recruiting participants to establish a baseline for comparisons. I envision three levels of involvement depending on the data collection and reporting abilities of each utility. Ideally, the benchmarking will continue an annual basis and may bootstrap the entire population of water and wastewater utilities in Nebraska to higher levels of service and accountability if wide participation is obtained.
A key objective from benchmarking your utility with others is to encourage best practices. Many of the most important best practices for any utility center around asset-management program activities. A comprehensive asset-management program prioritizes expenditures for projects and equipment based on their risk, life expectancy, and current condition. A good asset-management program takes the politics out of money decisions. Moreover, asset management programs show what levels of expenditure a utility needs to make in order to sustain operations. If you're not sustaining your system, then your utility is creating a backlog of needs that your grandchildren will have to pay in order to catch up. In addition to the many other benefits, asset management aids in minimizing operating costs and often prevents costly emergency repairs.
The Nebraska Section AWWA is here to serve. Please visit the website and give us your suggestions.
Thanks for all that you do.
