Leveraging Cost-Effective Water Asset Management that Helps Taxpayers

This presentation will illustrate how Mesa Water was able to improve its established business methods and simplify operations by using processes from the work and asset systems. It covers the most impactful business practice changes, such as the implementation of a complete management system, the tracking of work activity time to assets and projects for performance plans, the preparation of bi-weekly schedules, the simplification of account charts, and the use of automated systems. The presentation will address the importance of organizational reconstruction for streamlining business practices. The two speakers will share how a continuous focus on optimizing work efforts has resulted in more work being completed in less time. Historical operational inefficiencies for both agencies and their solutions will be discussed. The presentation will address how operational improvements had a large monetary impact. Mesa Water was able to save over $6.3 million in five years and got an award from the OC Taxpayers Association. Further, the District has established a one-of-a-kind rating scheme to review its entire operations at every level on a three-scale system with specific performance measures for a sustainable system in place. Further, it creates accountability of employees to their elected leadership and water user clients. The staff that will be presenting bring over 70 years of public works experience, as well as one who is a member of APWA’s Asset Management Committee.
At the conclusion of this session participants will be better able to:
• Identify how an agency can improve operations by integrating a complete work and asset system to continuously evaluate their organization, and adjust and optimize organizational structure.
• Utilize Mesa Water’s experiences, improving processes and simplifying procedures as a general framework for a water utility using a systematic approach.
• Recognize how an agency can internally assess employee involvement in all aspects of its operations using basic asset management principles.