Join us for “An Interactive Utility Discussion on Collection System Cleaning Programs: Building Consensus on a New Paradigm” to initiate the development of defensible industry standards for collection system preventive maintenance activities.
Do you support collection systems as a utility worker, consultant, vendor, or regulator? Do you believe that the public’s funds, intended to protect the Waters of the U.S. through the reduction of the number and volume of SSOs, should be allocated to the operation and maintenance (O&M) practices that provide the greatest benefit? Do you believe that industry criteria should support effective asset management?
If so, we invite you to a 90-minute WEFTEC technical session, on Wednesday, October 4, from 8:30-10:00 a.m., sponsored by the Collection Systems Committee’s Operation and Maintenance (O&M) Technical Projects Group.
Making a Start
Collection system O&M is expensive and can be sub-optimal in SSO prevention. Current industry criteria, and therefore regulations, have been based on outdated and unproven assumptions. In this session, we will initiate the development of defensible industry standards for collection system preventive maintenance activities that are customizable for various system sizes and cost-effective, while meeting the goal of reducing system failures.
During this session, you will participate in interactive data-gathering efforts to support a position paper on a new water sector standard for cleaning program frequencies.
What You Will Learn
We will identify inefficiencies in a utility’s area-wide and hot-spot cleaning programs and reduce SSOs in that utility by shifting, not increasing, resources. We will recognize that current O&M and data management technologies provide further opportunities for optimization of your collection system efforts and can be applied sector-wide.
This session is intended to bring new insights to you, or better yet, to let you know that you are not the only one questioning the effectiveness of current O&M criteria. There will be future data gathering activities where you will have the opportunity to participate and share your insights to help shape the best possible industry criteria.
What We Are Seeking
The session will be highly interactive and collaborative and will use polling to gain your initial feedback and to gain an understanding of sector attitudes. We are developing the polling questions and welcome your input and questions.
Lest you think, as a wet weather utility, or in sector supporting wet weather utilities, that O&M cleaning is not your primary concern, nothing can be further from the truth. O&M costs are significant, and reallocating funds to wet weather concerns is likely to be shown to be more effective and therefore appropriate for sector support.
This technical session is the first step in the development of industry criteria that support an effective collection system O&M. Together we can improve our industry. We hope to see you at WEFTEC to support our initiative.
