Resolve Group’s National Manager for Water, Thomas Haarhoff, attended Water New Zealand’s annual conference in Hamilton from 17-19 September, which looked at implementing reform in the water sector.
Thomas noted two recurring themes at the conference: how asset criticality needs to drive asset management decisions, and the growing importance of measuring inflow and infiltration sewer networks. It is hoped the techniques related to the analysis of criticality can guide renewal programmes, helping to defer non-critical renewals and thereby mitigating the ‘renewals bow wave.’ The accurate measurement of inflow and infiltration enhances the criticality approach by defining when assets that would be run to failure would become a cost and compliance burden for an asset owner.
The Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team (SCIRT) and Christchurch City are taking the criticality approach further, integrating the cost of earthquake recovery into asset design decisions. This provides an interesting tool for decision makers to minimise the cost of future earthquakes. The work could have applications throughout New Zealand and be applied to any natural hazard.