Water and Wastewater

The water and wastewater industry needs to ensure water safety, optimal and reliable water quantity and water quality. All this in a context of social changes such as climate adaptation, circularity and energy reduction and – generation. Water authorities have to respond to these challenges. At the same time, these organizations need to ensure the continuous performance of the assets within acceptable costs and risks. Both tasks appeal to the same limited resources (people, money). As a result we see a competition between preservation (keep things running) and innovation (respond to social changes).

Organizations have to be able to qualify and quantify this Asset Management triangle of Performance, Cost and Risk to their Board and other stakeholders to enable well-informed decision making. This requires organizations to have a good insight into their asset base and their own organization. Important trends in this domain are ageing assets and an ageing workforce, which can be detrimental to the organizational goals. Utilizing modern technologies and alignment of the organization to utilize these opportunities are a means to be ready for the future.

MaxGrip has a vast track record in the water and wastewater industry. We have helped many asset owners overcome APM obstacles to transform into a future-proof, robust organization.

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Discover your asset improvement potential

How we help

Transform for lasting improvements

Asset Improvement Program: get a comprehensive fit/gap analysis, customized roadmap and business case to reach asset performance targets. From strategizing, small-scale implementation to full-scale deployment and proven success.
Implementing Asset Management: tailoring the principles of Asset Management for our clients. Important elements are a Strategic Asset Management Plan (SAMP), Long Term Asset Plans (LTAP) and realizing effective coordination between the asset-related departments, supported by an integrated Asset Information System.
Risk-based Asset Management: create, deploy and optimize controlled risk management together with our client. In addition, we develop maintenance strategies ensuring asset reliability and cost optimization. Typical methodologies include: RAMS, FMECA, Reliability Centered Maintenance and Root Cause Analysis.
Turn-around maintenance planning: transforming the traditional ad-hoc day-to-day maintenance execution to a more centralized turn-around approach, which requires a transformation in people’s behavior, planning, preparation and EAM system support.
Asset Information Management: from data cleansing to data governance. We help to control the whole Asset data Life-cycle.
Digital Transformation, helping organizations to utilize the power of digital technologies. Developing top-down transformational capabilities such as a digital strategy, digital competences and a digital infrastructure. Good examples are Predictive Maintenance and Asset health dashboards
Industry 4.0 software solutions. Whether these are EAM or APM 4.0 solutions; we help with solution and vendor selection, functional design, system and process configuration and full deployments. Prioritizing reporting results and company-wide dashboards to gather insights and stay in control.
Change Management: enable organizational learning, knowledge transfer, training, coaching, interim staff to work side-by-side with the workforce

Get in touch.

Alex Lemuz
Sales Manager - Americas

alex.lemuz@maxgrip.com
T: +1 832-933-1602

Schedule a chat with me

APM Challenges for Water and Wastewater

Ageing workforce

The water and wastewater industry is known for its highly-skilled but ageing technicians. This is a known challenge as this also means that the expertise and asset related knowledge threatens to get lost if no mitigating measures are taken. Digitalization is crucial to overcome this. On the one hand by modernizing maintenance and operations and by doing so attracting young technicians who are digital natives. On the other hand, by safeguarding information and expertise through implementing proper data management practices and securing data in for example Enterprise Asset Management systems.

Asset Health insights

Remote and situational insight in the current condition of your critical assets and infrastructure is becoming more and more important This is especially true when operations (monitoring & control) and maintenance are in one centralized location and the assets are scattered across a large geographical area. Connecting assets through historian data and sensors, making the data available in relevant systems and connecting data from IT and OT perspectives will enable you to get qualitative insights in asset condition and performance. This supports you in your life-cycle decisions (maintenance, replacement, refurbishment, lifetime extensions), which in turn results in an optimized balance between performance, costs and risks.

Digitalization

Industry 4.0 transformation is high on the agenda for many water and wastewater utility companies. Assets, systems and the workforce need to be connected through smart solutions (historian databases, sensors, mobility, EAM systems, etc). When all of the output data is connected and business logic and functionality such as smart algorithms and Digital Twins is added then the whole organization gets access to a new realm of possibilities with enriched insights and enables a higher level of control and continuous optimization. As such, the digital connection which is now being created is a prerequisite to enable the principles of Asset Management, such as Line of Sight and data-driven decisions.

Optimized Asset Performance

Climate change requires Water Authorities to minimize the footprint of their activities. In the domain of Asset Management this requires a shift from Operations & Maintenance to integrated Asset Performance Management. It will open up opportunities for optimizing asset utilization, lifetime extension of assets and minimizing energy use. Maintenance is in this perspective still a valuable activity, but Asset Performance Management is more than that. Providing insights in energy use and benchmarking help to support optimized life-cycle decisions.

Organizing for Asset Management

All (water) companies have introduced the principles of Asset Management to a certain degree. This forces companies to think about the roles of Asset Owner, Asset Manager and Service Provider. You have to map these roles on the traditional silos of Planning, Projects, Operation and Maintenance Also considering which roles can or should be outsources to the market. It is a careful balance in which water companies can find an optimized balance in cooperation with the market.