Date: 2025 08-August 08

Maintenance strategy
Asset management
Vendor: Brown and Caldwell

People

• Anne Kennedy (Brown and Caldwell)
• Rich McGillis (Brown and Caldwell)
• Joshua Balentine (Brown and Caldwell)
• Henry Nakayama
• Don Hudgins
• Clayton Bennett
• Chris Luss
• Derek McElroy
• Robert Dodson

Don et al saw Brown and Caldwell's presentation at the 2025 Water Professionals Conference in Knoxville last week.

Intro

• Key interest: Condition and consequence to inform an R&R plan

Rich McGillis specializes in water and sewer. The regional manager for "utility performance".

Louisville

Louisville, KY had a consent decree to negotiate asset management into their amended CD.
Quality quality and pump stations needs to improve.
Define:

• How to assess their assets
  Taking inventory:
• Looked at every vertical asset
• five regional plants
• two larger plants
• 290 pump stations
  Key questions:
• What are the most critical assets?
• What should you spend on in the future?
• What is the process of capturing data to enable you to make better decisions?

There are some legal aspects here. Jargon:

• "CIP"
• "CD"
• "CMMS"

Louisville's big problem

• Labor limited.
• Were not optimizing the visualization of the data

Henry: how did you determine the critical assets?
Anne: consequences, likelihood of failure.

They sure do like Power BI.

"rehab and replacement"

11 months, 50k assets.

Meat and Potatoes

Don: Impressed with wastewater specific approach, rather than just sewers and manholes.
Chris: Yay, less work.
Don: We were impressed with the 20 year spending plan.
- Long lead times have been problematic for us.
- The city should have planning in the CIP area
- We need outside help to put together bid packages
- Inventory all of the assets - does it make sense to coordinate bids
- Enable our own 20 year forward-look
- Use CIP budget rather than plant operating budget

Anne:

• Louisville has to spend a certain amount every year due to their CD
• Operations and engineering shared ideas.
• "Six codes of happiness"
• Each asset has a "happiness code"

CMMS software: IPS : Enterprise Asset Management - IPS ENERGY
Software: Articulate

Our CMMS: Hexagon

Six part naming conventions

Don:

• Primarily we want to be able to write specifications to write bids for things?
• Rather than getting a vendor to give us the specs
• We don't have the personnel to bid properly
• Chris Luss needs help to buy stuff.
• We already have a contract with Stratum
• Inventory of all assets to enable bid packages
• Go through all of our files, help us upload specs to all of our equipment.

• Stratum guy will be here next week

Anne:

• Helped to inventory the documents
• Pushed for document scanning to get it into the DMS, and then attached to asset records
• Make it easier to find submittal docs, manuals, etc

Don:

• We are not under a consent decree, so we have more flexibility
  Anne:
• Black & Veatch is a great company
• We can piece together the best elements to accomplish the goal.
• Condition assessment, engineering study

Don:

• Black & Veatch has focused on the sewer system, not a wholistic review of the treatment plants.
  Anne:
• Did you like the way they did it?

Joshua:

• Do you need the scope of the fee?
  Don:
• It needs to be phased
• Robert Dodson needs to decide if he wants to be involved
• Stiles should be first, because Maxson is still under CMAR
  Chris:
• Vote: Maxson first, hard ball first
  Don:
• First phase, review current CMMS's
• Is Robert Dodson keeping up with Hexagon?
  Robert:
• Nope. Lack of personnel to load assets.
• Black & Veatch is still assessing lift stations, replacements etc.
• What are you doing with the plants?
• Currently engaged with Black & Veatch for maintenance and tracking of lift stations.
• Would like to see a 1 to 10 year plan.
  Don:
• Is Black & Veatch doing this out of the SARP10?
  Robert:
• Yes
• Calcium aluminate coating in the wet well
• minor replacement as necessary
• Conditions have changed significantly since the project was bid
• In some cases, entire lift stations have had to be rebuild even after they were refurbished
  Anne:
• Yep, just sitting in a problem. Louisville experienced that.
• Aging data is a problem.
• Data-informed decision making in near-real time (within 6 months)
• Morris Foreman was where the started - it was the worst: Morris Forman Water Quality Treatment Center | MSD

Don:

• We are most interested in electrical, mechanical, instrumentation
• We have an Emerson system DCS, with a SureService plan
• Do you consider pipelines to be an asset?
• Pipe galleries differ from long piping
• An asset is what a maintenance person would touch, rather than inventory

Anne:

• What is an asset? How do you define it?
• Louisville defines it based on a dollar amount, $10k
  • 

Don:

• We have a problem with value change, given capitalization and depreciation
• We want to synchronize our list with the City's list
  Anne
• It's all about an existing agreement for what can be bought without intense review, it if it already in the plan.
• You guys don't have a definition of an asset.
• Components versus parts versus assets versus systems.
• Gatsby 34 definition, $2,500 - this might be too low, because you
• Asset definitions from AWWA, WEF, and others
• What is the hook?
  • Maintenance
  • investment
  • data collection
  • decision making
  • evolve over time
  • start somewhere
  • people do adjust their definitions of assets when they recognize something is non-deal
  • Over granular or not granular enough

Don:

• CDM did the CMAR upgrade - ASTM formatting for asset management -
• ISO 55001 ISO 55001:2014 - Asset management — Management systems — Requirements - rigid - is it useful for municipalities?
• Excel spreadsheet of nameplate information handed over by CDM Smith

Anne:

• You want to start at Stiles?
  Don:
• Yes, we want to wait until the dust settles at Maxson.
• Naming conventions
• You may have to work with Stratum
  Joshua:
• Will this be a professional services contract?
  Don:
• Yep
• We don't have the budget
• You'll have to sell this to Scott Morgan and Tasha King-Davis
• HVAC's are big problems at both plants.
• We should do intensive maintenance on some items which we usually wait until they break down, and you can make recommendations on the HVAC program
• Louisville has 7,500 assets, we have identified only 500 assets

Don:

• Probes, sensors, points, assets

Questions

Clayton:

• How can we leverage an opportunity like an asset review to improve our integrated databasing for our various systems? CAD, SCADA/DCS, GIS, digital twin, lab testing, EAM
• Answer: What functional requirements do you want?
• Follow-up: Design must be API, modularity
• Don: This is not the primary purpose of this contract

Next Meeting

The Plan

• Teams call early next week, Monday or Tuesday
• Review Hexagon with Krish
• Diane Smith of the contact for the Hexagon system at the Stiles Plant
• Cross referencing naming conventions
• Tuesday Meeting 9:30 AM Central time, August 12th