AWWA JAW55963

This paper discusses an electronic manual, produced by the American Water Works Association Research Foundation (AwwaRF), called the Water Treatment Plant Infrastructure Assessment Manager (AwwaRF project 460). Consisting of a CD-ROM and a user's manual, this product offers a multidiscipline approach for assessing the condition and functionality of a treatment plant's infrastructure, including its subsystems and components. Disciplines are classified as structural/architectural; process mechanical; electrical; civil/site; heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning; and instrumentation. The manual's state-of-the-art assessment techniques, coupled with user-friendly software that records and represents the data, allow managers to efficiently conduct meaningful and standardized field assessments that can then be used by staff at all levels of an organization. One feature includes automatically generated reports that can be designed to assess such characteristics as the overall condition of a facility, the vulnerability of water production relative to system operations, or the safety of plant personnel. The infrastructure manager software can be customized to reflect the specifics of an individual plant, and users can input more detailed information to generate more detailed reports. The infrastructure manager software allows utilities to reduce the amount of maintenance that is performed as a reaction to deteriorating conditions. Instead, they can initiate predictive maintenance and rehabilitation programs that are less costly but still produce safe, dependable drinking water.