Infrastructure Optimization (IO) Toolset Used by Southgate Water and Sanitation District, Colorado

Infrastructure managers have a variety of information sources available to help manage assets. As Cityworks end users with GIS, infrastructure managers at the Southgate Water and Sanitation District in Centennial, Colorado, have the ability to view all their assets, including data on recently completed work. The District’s ability to access and integrate data from other specialized sources (such as CCTV and hydraulic modeling) is not as easy and represents a gap in operational data.  (See Figure 1)

Southgate’s Board realized it required a more sophisticated approach to asset management that would consolidate and leverage all available data sources to enable the District to make capital improvement and rehabilitation decisions. With fewer dollars available and fewer resources to perform the work, doing more with less is the reality facing Southgate’s infrastructure managers.

Southgate provides water distribution and wastewater collection systems to over 75,000 residents. With a coverage area of 18 square miles, including the cities of Cherry Hills Village, Centennial, Greenwood Village, and Lone Tree and the counties of Arapahoe and unincorporated Douglas, Southgate’s ability to maintain high service levels to its customer base depends largely on its ability to optimize and maintain its existing infrastructure.

To enhance this GIS-enabled Asset Management System (AMS), Southgate tapped Woolpert to pilot test and install a program that would fully realize the potential of the existing AMS and GIS information and other data sources.

Through a collaborative process that began in 2010, Woolpert provided Southgate with the resources to create a customizable tool to enable dataflow tracking of its entire infrastructure. The adapted solution became known as the Infrastructure Optimization (IO) toolset, a set of sophisticated analysis tools designed to support infrastructure sustainability and optimization. IO provides the framework to systematically analyze and calculate asset criticality and risk, predict replacement costs, and conduct scenario-based planning for infrastructure maintenance and replacement rehabilitation.

IO is an Esri ArcGIS extension designed for engineers and operators. Along with the advancements in Server AMS, IO closes the data gap for Southgate’s infrastructure managers. IO is an advanced asset management toolset that rapidly improves the engineer’s decision-making capability by determining where investments will provide the maximum life cycle for assets. IO supports a holistic, sustainable project approach that integrates with the existing GIS and CMMS data to inform rehabilitation and replacement decisions.  (See Figure 2)

IO allows Southgate operators to create scenarios to generate and evaluate asset risk scores. Asset ID, Date Installed, and other GIS data help determine risk analysis and inspection. Engineers can then configure a weighted tracking system to determine the probability of failure (PoF) factors for an asset (e.g., percent consumed, sewer and soil conditions, maintenance frequency). Consequence of failure (CoF) factors are configured and weighted in much the same manner (sewer pipe size, ground surface, etc.). The sum of PoF and CoF results in a 0-100 score of business risk exposure (BRE) or risk. Risk configuration is completed once all the PoF and CoF factors are compiled. Risk scenarios are represented in a color-coded severity system that displays asset severity in the GIS. This helps operators quickly evaluate areas of high risk and prioritize where to perform inspections, maintenance, and rehabilitation.

IO’s replacement module is used to calculate potential replacement costs. Engineers can use a straight-line depreciation method using Date Installed and Estimated Effective Life in the current year (which is automatically calculated when determining risk). Alternatively, operators can evaluate cost using custom decay curves. Using standard replacement strategies, operators can quickly determine replacement costs by year.

The IO interface allows Southgate engineers to generate charts and reports of calculated replacement costs on high-risk assets. For example, an operator can select the eight-inch main pipes, filter by material type, and generate replacement reports that illustrate the cost of replacing the selected mains with different materials. The results estimate current and future values to help with long-term forecasting.

In the past 15 years, Woolpert has worked with Cityworks to support 30 different Woolpert clients in over 100 Woolpert projects, becoming Cityworks first diamond-level partner. It was this relationship that earned Southgate’s trust in the project. Because of the strong bond between Cityworks and Woolpert and their reliability, dedication, and commitment, Southgate was very confident in the product that Woolpert could provide.

With IO’s ability to systematically analyze and calculate asset criticality and risk, predict replacement costs, and conduct scenario-based planning, Southgate has a toolset that can manage infrastructure maintenance and replacement rehabilitation for years to come. The IO toolset is now available as a third-party application to Cityworks users. For more information, visit www.woolpert.com/io.