Leveraging Asset Management Data for Improved Water Infrastructure Planning

The purpose of the study was to better understand current asset data collection and analysis in Canada for water, wastewater, and stormwater systems and to identify strategies to improve operations and planning outcomes. [...] The results of the national survey indicate good adoption of municipal/utility asset management plans across Canada, and the application of asset data to inform decisions on performance, cost optimization, and risk reduction. [...] Support and incentives over the last decade from upper-levels of government and others have focused on the development of asset management plans, which has largely been responsible for the increased number of asset management plans employed at the local level in Canada. [...] Several provinces and the federal government have since introduced asset management planning requirements to promote maturity in the sector, and last year the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) launched the Municipal Asset Management Program (MAMP), a five-year $50 million program funded by the Government of Canada to assist municipalities in building asset management capacity. [...] A leading advisory committee of experts and practitioners helped to refine the scope of the research, reviewed the survey results, and contributed to the report’s findings.