Published on 19-Mar-2010
Validated on 15 Mar 2012
"IBM Maximo is helping make maintenance more transparent so we know how our facilities and assets are performing and how much it costs us. We wouldn’t have been able to do this without Maximo." - —Dean Wyley, Senior Civil Engineer, Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District
Customer:
Sacramento Area Sewer District (SASD)
Industry:
Government
Deployment country:
United States
Solution:
Asset Management, Cloud & Service Management, Service Management, Smarter Planet
Smarter Planet:
Smart Products, Smarter Cities, Smarter Water
IBM Business Partner:
Crory & Associates, EMA, Inc., ESRI
Overview
At two agencies in Sacramento, California—the Sacramento Area Sewer District (SASD) and the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District (SRCSD)—the job of managing the area’s wastewater infrastructure system is getting easier thanks to an integrated approach to asset and maintenance management.
Business need:
Two Sacramento region wastewater agencies wanted greater operational visibility to reduce costs and help staff to catch and resolve infrastructure problems.
Solution:
Working with IBM and IBM Business Partners, the agencies implemented a work and asset management system that integrates information about assets, their conditions, work processes and costs for better planning and control.
Results:
Comprehensive visibility into assets helps staff to see emerging problems and institute preventive measures.
Benefits:
Improves asset reliability and lifespan at the lowest cost to taxpayers; Helps agencies accurately prioritize work orders to improve response and meet service level requirements;Streamlines regulatory reporting to eliminate nearly a month’s worth of effort each year
Case Study
Overview
The Need
Two Sacramento region wastewater agencies wanted greater operational visibility to reduce costs and help staff to catch and resolve infrastructure problems.
The Solution
Working with IBM and IBM Business Partners, the agencies implemented a work and asset management system that integrates information about assets, their conditions, work processes and costs for better planning and control.
What Makes it Smarter
Comprehensive visibility into assets helps staff to see emerging problems and institute preventive measures.
The Result
“IBM Maximo Asset Management is expected to help us more effectively manage our infrastructure.”
—Jennifer Swinney, Associate Civil Engineer, Sacramento Area Sewer District
Business Benefits
- Improves asset reliability and lifespan at the lowest cost to taxpayers
- Helps agencies accurately prioritize work orders to improve response and meet service level requirements
- Streamlines regulatory reporting to eliminate nearly a month’s worth of effort each year
Smarter Planet
Smarter Cities: Improving services while reducing costs
Instrumented
Asset and maintenance data, including work orders, asset histories, visual observations, costs and more, is captured and tracked from a single platform.
Interconnected
The solution enables the sharing of data across agency departments, including maintenance and operations, regulatory compliance, and business planning to improve forecasting.
Intelligent
Comprehensive visibility into operations helps staff to see emerging problems and take action.
Solution Components
Software
- IBM® Maximo® Asset Management
- Syclo SMART Mobile Suite for Maximo
- CUES Granite XP closed-circuit TV video inspection
- ESRI ArcGIS
IBM Business Partner
- Crory & Associates
- EMA
- IntelliSolns
Pull Quote
“IBM Maximo is helping make maintenance more transparent so we know how our facilities and assets are performing and how much it costs us. We wouldn’t have been able to do this without Maximo.”
—Dean Wyley, Senior Civil Engineer, Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District
In many communities, sewer and sanitation agencies face significant challenges when it comes to cost-effectively managing aging water and sewer infrastructures. At two agencies in Sacramento, California—the Sacramento Area Sewer District (SASD) and the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District (SRCSD)—the job of managing the area’s wastewater infrastructure system is getting easier thanks to an integrated approach to asset and maintenance management.
A focus on prevention
SASD is responsible for managing wastewater collection services for more than one million people in the Sacramento region, including the unincorporated areas of Sacramento County, the cities of Citrus Heights, Rancho Cordova and Elk Grove, as well as portions of the cities of Folsom and Sacramento. Its wastewater collection system relies on more than 400,000 assets including 52 miles of forced mains and pressure systems, 3,000 miles of gravity sewers, and 279,000 service level connections. These pipes and pump stations collect wastewater directly from homes and businesses before sending it to the regional treatment facility, run by the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District.
SASD had used a computerized maintenance management system previously—an early approach to today’s enterprise asset management solutions—but the system didn’t provide the capabilities needed to effectively manage costs.
“One of our primary goals is cost-effectively managing the system,” says Jennifer Swinney, associate civil engineer, Sacramento Area Sewer District. “But with our old system, we couldn’t roll up the cost of all work associated with a specific work order or asset. This complicated our preventive maintenance efforts.”
Working with IBM® Business Partners EMA, along with Crory & Associates and IntelliSolns, SASD is integrating IBM Maximo® Asset Management software with information from its geographic information system from ESRI and observations from live video footage of the pipes themselves. The solution will enable the sharing of data across agency departments, including maintenance and operations, regulatory compliance, business planning and capacity planning, to improve forecasting. Observations about the condition of pipes collected from the CUES Granite XP closed-circuit TV video inspection system can be evaluated against asset and maintenance data to help staff better assess the actual condition of the pipes.
In cases when problems do arise, IBM Maximo software helps engineers to understand how the asset failed, why it failed and when, so they can develop the necessary maintenance strategies to prevent future asset failures. And because staff can also track all costs associated with operating and maintaining each asset, they’re able to implement these strategies at the lowest cost.
“With IBM Maximo we can understand the cost of doing business down to the penny,” says
Greg Munsill, consultant, SASD.
Through the use of Syclo’s SMART Mobile Suite for Maximo, maintenance and operations crews have access to repair histories and job plans—and soon safety warnings and traffic plans—from the field.
“We have a well-informed highly trained M&O [maintenance and operations] force and the more information we give them, the more efficiently they can address issues out in the field,” says Patrick Schroeder, senior civil engineer, SASD.
Greater transparency reduces costs
The Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District (SRCSD) which treats wastewater from the SASD along with other regional wastewater collection agencies, also uses IBM Maximo Asset Management software to help it effectively manage its state-of-the-art treatment facilities along with nearly 100 miles of “interceptor” pipes and 20 pump stations. On an average day the SRCSD must transport and treat 165 million gallons of wastewater—enough to fill a football field 40 stories high.
“We’re really able to optimize our maintenance strategies, saving us thousands of dollars each year while meeting our goals for asset sustainability and environmental stewardship,” says Dean Wyley, senior civil engineer, SRCSD.
By integrating asset and maintenance data along with service level requirements for each asset, asset dependencies, and the impact of asset failure, staff can accurately prioritize work orders to keep operations running smoothly. The system helps manage roughly 12,000 assets, 5,900 corrective maintenance work orders and 21,500 preventive maintenance work orders.
“If the pumping function failed, for example, there could be a high consequence with sewer backing up into homes, businesses and into streets,” says Wyley. “So managing our pumps is very critical to operations. With IBM Maximo software, we can see what impact a problem with a particular pump might cause and respond accordingly.”
This type of information is also combined with maintenance and asset costs to help staff make better decisions when upgrading infrastructure assets or parts. In one case, staff reviewed the possible replacement of the stainless steel shaft on its chemical mixers with a new titanium shaft that promised longer durability in the highly chlorinated environment the mixers operate in. However, after analyzing the data, staff found that the stainless steel shaft could not only operate for the lifespan of the mixer, it was also three to four times less expensive. In other cases, SRCSD has been able to justify what seemed like costly repairs based on the long-term energy savings those repairs would deliver.
SRCSD staff also plan to use the software to help staff streamline regulatory reporting of preventive maintenance activities across all its mechanical and chemical systems.
“Every time regulators come, three to four staff members spend several weeks of time collecting and compiling the necessary information to demonstrate compliance,” says Wyley. “With IBM Maximo, we can run the reports we need in minutes, eliminating nearly a month worth of effort each year.”
In the end, for both agencies, better managing operations is the key to reducing costs.
“IBM Maximo software is helping make maintenance more transparent so we know how our facilities and assets are performing and how much it costs us,” says Wyley. “We wouldn’t have been able to do this without Maximo.”
For more information
To learn more about how IBM can help transform your business and help you innovate, please contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner.
Visit us at: ibm.com/tivoli
For more information on Crory & Associates, visit:
www.crory.biz
For more information on EMA, Inc., visit:
www.ema-inc.com
For more information on ESRI, visit:
www.esri.com
For more information on IntelliSolns, visit:
www.intellisolns.com
For more information on Syclo, visit:
www.syclo.com
For more information on the Sacramento Area Sewer District, visit:
www.sacsewer.com
For more information on the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District, visit:
www.srcsd.com
Products and services used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.
Software:
Maximo Asset Management
Legal Information
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2010 IBM Corporation 1 New Orchard Road Armonk, NY 10504 U.S.A. Produced in the United States of America February 2010 All Rights Reserved IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, Smarter Planet, the planet icon, Maximo and Tivoli are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. These and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with the appropriate symbol (® or TM), indicating U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml Other company, product or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. This case study is an example of how one customer uses IBM products. There is no guarantee of comparable results. References in this publication to IBM products and services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates. TIC14102-USEN-00