Water assets can become extremely costly, and many municipalities aren’t equipped to provide the ongoing work needed to maintain and monitor them. Withou
t proper maintenance, these assets can break down and require expensive repairs. This can result in a decrease in useful life. Water asset management is essential to help improve water sustainability and make the jobs of those who oversee these assets more efficient. Having a water asset management system helps maintenance staff properly maintain assets and record relevant information.
Here are seven ways asset management can benefit water sustainability.
1. Increases a Water Asset’s Useful Life
Even with proper maintenance, any asset will eventually reach the end of its useful life. Without scheduled maintenance and repair, however, assets will degrade more rapidly. This will result in an asset reaching the end of its useful life sooner than expected. But with proper asset management, managers can identify issues and improve the way they make maintenance and repair decisions. The outcome is the prevention of issues becoming more serious if they go unnoticed.
2. Provides Better Customer Service
Improving the way water assets are taken care of can also help improve customer satisfaction. Customers are paying for water utilities and want to know they’re getting service worth the cost. Water assets receiving inadequate maintenance can affect the quality of service customers receive. Asset management helps you maintain assets more efficiently which results in better customer service.
3. Helps Meet Regulatory Requirements
Municipalities and water utilities are expected to meet certain standards. If assets are underperforming, behind on maintenance, and record-keeping is lacking, it can be difficult to keep up with the requirements that need to be met. Properly maintaining assets with a water management software system can help make it easier to meet regulatory requirements. Regular maintenance, work orders, and detailed record-keeping can all help ensure that an asset is up to date and meets any relevant requirements.
4. Makes Budgeting More Efficient
Efficient budgeting is important because no municipality or organization has an unlimited resources. An asset management system can help you better understand historical and future costs needed to maintain assets. You have better information to make decisions, leading to better budgeting and less money going to waste. You’ll understand the costs needed to maintain assets and where budgets need to be adjusted to properly manage the infrastructure.
5. Improves Response to Emergencies
If something happens to an asset, you want to know right away. Without prioritizing asset management, this can be difficult. Without an efficient plan to deal with emergencies there is a risk the situation will become even worse and cause more serious and expensive damage. Having an asset management system in place can help you improve the way your staff responds to emergencies.
6. Increases Safety of Water Assets
Broken and damaged assets could become a safety risk. Damaged infrastructure can negatively effect drinking water quality and harm the surrounding environment. Asset management software for Water Utilities helps you protect water assets from serious damage. The outcome of assets receiving regular maintenance and repairs results in fewer safety concerns related to the asset.
7. Helps Set More Accurate Rates
One area where a municipality or water utility might struggle is setting rates they charge customers for the water service. If an organization doesn’t fully understand the costs of managing an asset, it can’t set accurate rates for its services. This could lead to unnecessarily overcharging customers or undercharging and not having the funds to maintain assets. Water asset management can be a huge help for decision-making, as it helps provide vital information about an asset. Asset management can show how much it costs to maintain the asset infrastructure. Having a good understanding of the costs helps you price your services more accurately.
See What Water Asset Management Can Do for You
Any organization with water assets needs to have a reliable asset management system. There are plenty of great benefits of having an asset management system in place that can help make day-to-day operations run more smoothly and cut down on costs. The ShareNet water asset management software can help municipalities and water companies manage tasks such as reporting, work orders, and asset tracking.
Find out how ShareNet water asset management can help today.
