Operating, managing, owning and/or making decisions about your water system can be a challenging endeavor. Complex and increasing regulations, decreasing revenues, and decaying infrastructure only increase the difficulties. This dynamic workshop will provide useful information to make your job just a little easier.

In this workshop, we will focus on:
– Developing a map for your water utility
– Operations and maintenance planning
– Roles and responsibilities for operators and
boards (or owners)
– Long-term capital planning

This workshop is intended for a mixed audience of managers, operators, elected leaders, decision-makers, and bookkeeper/finance personnel.

A brief description of each topic is provided below.

Water Utility Mapping: Mapping your system’s assets provides tremendous benefits for operations and maintenance and for emergency repairs.  A good, comprehensive map allows an operator to know where pipes, hydrants, valves, tanks and other assets are located in order to save time, plan O&M activities, such as valve exercising or flushing, and assist with pipe locating. Mapping also allows an operator to pass on information about the system to another operator.  The training will include a discussion of the benefits of mapping as well as techniques that you can use to create a map of your system.

Long Term Capital Planning: Often, capital planning looks out only 5 to 10 years.  However, because the system is intended to be sustainable for as long as the community plans to exist, looking longer term, say 50 to 100 years, into the future is important.  Looking longer term and considering what the investment in infrastructure needs to be for years to come is an important step in ensuring a sustainable future.  Ways to complete a long term capital plan will be discussed.

Roles and Responsibilities for Operators and Boards: Every person within a water utility has their role.  It is important to understand the various roles and responsibilities in order to keep the system operating smoothly.  These roles and responsibilities will be discussed as well as communication between the levels of the utility.

Operations and Maintenance Planning: One of the best ways to ensure that assets last as long as they can and to reduce overall life cycle costs is to perform the appropriate operation and maintenance (O&M) activities. The three basic types of O&M (routine, preventative, and predictive) will be discussed along with an approach to developing an overall O&M plan for the system.

Trainer: Heather Himmelberger, Director, Southwest Environmental Finance Center

Cost: Complimentary. Please register to reserve your spot.

CEUs: This workshop has been approved for .6 CEUs.

Contact: Francine Stefan, mfstefan@unm.edu

Partners: