Nation's Seventh-Largest Water Utility Adopts InfoMaster Smart Asset Management Solution

Oakland, California’s East Bay Municipal Utility District Counts on Innovyze Software to Help Manage Rehabilitation of Its Drinking Water Distribution Infrastructure

Innovyze, a leading global innovator of business analytics software and technologies for smart wet infrastructure, recently announced that the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD), Oakland, California, has chosen industry-leading InfoMaster Water software to help manage the repair, replacement and rehabilitation of its complex drinking water distribution infrastructure.

EBMUD serves over 1.4 million people within 20 cities and two counties covering a 425 square mile service area. It owns and operates six water production treatment plants and distribution system with over 4,000 miles of water mains as well as a Special District which provides wastewater collection and transmission for part of its service area. EBMUD plans to use InfoMaster to create fully prioritized short- and long-term water main rehabilitation, replacement, maintenance and management plans and develop sound, cost-effective capital programs to support them.

Many of the world’s drinking water distribution systems are reaching or have exceeded the end of their design lives and urgently require extensive upgrading through rehabilitation, repair, and/or replacement. As aging systems deteriorate, they become increasingly vulnerable to structural failures and are plagued by excessive leaks, drops in carrying capacity, poor water quality, and service disruptions. Age-related water infrastructure failures are commonly unexpected and catastrophic, resulting in large water losses, flooding, and local area damage.

Because of public health and safety implications, water utilities are forced to meet the challenges of keeping even such aging infrastructures up to date and efficient. Selecting the right pipes for rehabilitation at the right time is one of the main asset management challenges. An understanding of how pipes fail, combined with a quantitative grasp of the underlying causal factors likely to induce failure, is valuable in formulating a targeted approach to rehabilitation, repair and renewal planning. InfoMaster accurately estimates both the likelihood and consequence of failure for each individual pipe in the network, as well as the amount and time of occurrence of future failures. It reliably models the aging processes of water assets and accurately predicts their lifetimes and structural/functional failure potential and distribution over time. This critical information facilitates a proactive approach to identifying and managing these high-risk assets to help preserve structural integrity and keep the network operating well into the future. It also eliminates reactive maintenance (waiting for pipe failures to occur before repairing).

“Preserving the integrity of water network assets helps to ensure they remain available and reliable longer,” said Paul F. Boulos, Ph.D., BCEEM, NAE, Hon.D.WRE, Dist.D.NE, F.ASCE, President, COO and Chief Technical Officer for Innovyze. “Improving the likelihood of smoother operations with fewer interruptions — creating more uptime and less downtime - also means more profits for the operation. InfoMaster combines ease of learning and use with a powerful, comprehensive set of graphical presentation tools, time-based probabilistic asset failure analysis models, and asset integrity management capabilities that can accurately predict structural or functional deterioration of water mains. These unique advantages will help EBMUD develop sound annual replacement plans for critical pipes that balance investment with expected benefits in a risk-based management context. They will also enable the utility to exceed its operational quality standards by extending both asset service life and overall reliability and performance at maximum cost savings — significantly increasing return on investment. Innovyze is very proud to participate in EBMUD’s success in handling these challenges.”

About Innovyze
Innovyze is a leading global provider of wet infrastructure business analytics software solutions designed to meet the technological needs of water and wastewater utilities, government industries, and engineering organizations worldwide. Its clients include the majority of the largest UK, Australasia and North American cities, foremost utilities on all five continents, and ENR top-rated design firms. With unparalleled expertise and offices in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, the Innovyze connected portfolio of best-in-class product lines empowers thousands of engineers to competitively plan, manage, design, protect, operate and sustain highly efficient and reliable infrastructure systems, and provides an enduring platform for customer success. For more information, visit www.innovyze.com.