Designing an Asset Management Guideline for the Dutch Wastewater Industry

Abstract

In the Netherlands, the collection and processing of wastewater is executed by 415 municipalities (collection) and 25 water boards (processing). Those organizations have signed an agreement to reduce costs. Implementation of asset management is supposed to play a vital role in this cost reduction. In order to facilitate the implementation of asset management, the representative body of the industry [Stichting RIONED and STOWA (Dutch acronym for the Foundation for Applied Water Research)] envisioned an asset management guideline tailored to the specific needs of the wastewater industry. However, due to the diversity in size and scope of the asset managers to be and the assets in scope, it was not certain whether a single guideline would be possible nor if it would be cost-effective. To get a clearer view on those issues before committing large sums of money, the process of creating the guideline was split up in two phases. The first phase would result in a road map: design of the guideline, high-level planning of its realization, and the contours of a business case for implementation of asset management by means of the guideline. The second phase would then consist of actually realizing the guideline. In this paper, we describe the process we followed to arrive at the road map for the asset management guideline. The following can be concluded. Although the technical content of asset management for wastewater collection and wastewater treatment is very different, the process of management assets does not have to be different. By focusing on the asset management process, there was no need to distinguish wastewater treatment from wastewater collection. By making the guideline a collection of relative independent elements, it would do no harm to the concept of the guideline if in future elements would be added or removed.