While many cities and utilities practice asset management and master planning to guide investment in linear asset piping system renewal, enhancement and growth, few have integrated these practices to establish a single, comprehensive strategy covering all short, medium and long-term investment. As a result capital renewal and growth / enhancement planning are performed in isolation of one another, providing an understanding of the most pressing renewal and enhancement requirements, but ignoring the long-term implication of trading off one type of investment vs. the other.
To be prosperous, a community must achieve balance between sewer system capital renewal and growth. Doing this effectively requires insight into the respective implications of each, and their long term costs and benefits to the community, customers, and stakeholders. Key to this is being able to present sewer system renewal and growth/enhancement opportunities in terms of service impact, and compare all requirements using an objective, transparent and defensible approach. To meet these challenges, CH2M HILL has developed an integrated investment planning framework capable of tying decision making back to corporate objectives and customer service level impacts. By adopting this framework, municipal and utility managers and decision makers are able to measure and communicate the implications of trade-offs between service expansion and renewal, and establish strategies to manage the risks of reducing or delaying one type of investment, to accommodate another.