Adapting Leading Practices and Associated Tools

The purpose of the demonstration of WERF Strategic Asset management (SAM) decision support tools is to provide users with insight into the efforts and impacts of applying the various asset management concepts. To accomplish this, the research team identified four different utilities with asset management program at various stages. These utilities agreed to implement and integrate the tools into their existing programs. The tools that were demonstrated are the Levels of Service, Condition Assessment, Life Cycle Cost Projection, and Capital Project Validation and Prioritization. The research indicated that all four utilities were able to successfully integrate the WERF SAM tools and their principles into their existing asset management programs. However, each utility needed to make adjustments to the tools and methodologies to varying degrees to ensure proper integration. This is in line with the WERF instructions of use. The research also found that the implementation and integration of new asset management tools were far reaching, having impacts to organization structure, technology in use, and the asset management practices. Ultimately the WERF SAM tools were found to be beneficial by all four demonstration teams and therefore adapted permanently in varying degrees to their existing asset management programs.