The American Water Works Association (AWWA) will soon release the latest addition to their comprehensive Manuals of Water Supply Practice library: the AWWA Manual M77 Condition Assessment of Water Mains. Scheduled for release in mid-2018, the M77 manual will soon become the definitive guide for water utilities seeking the latest condition assessment techniques, technologies, and best practices.
Validated, peer-reviewed, and comprehensive
Modern water pipeline condition assessment technologies are relatively recent innovations in a century-old water industry. A decade ago, utilities evaluating pipelines for replacement or repair had no choice but to excavate pipe sections for visual inspection or perform “desktop condition assessment,” a method of evaluating pipes based on their design specification, age, location, and repair history of similar types of pipe to make best-guess estimatesabout the need for repair or replacement.
As a result, very few utilities had proactive, multi-year condition assessment programs — until the past few years. The high cost of replacing aging pipeline infrastructure in North America now reaching the end of its service life has triggered a wave of technology development and product innovation that is profoundly changing the industry landscape.
An array of advanced water pipeline condition assessment techniques and technologies now provide water utilities with reliable means and methods to determine the true structural status of water distribution and transmission mains. However, questions remain: which condition assessment method is best for what kind of pipe, deployed when, implemented how, and why?
Recognizing the need for industry guidance, the American Water Works Association (AWWA)—accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as an approved standards-developing organization for the water industry—launched a collaborative effort to produce a new “manual of practice” for utilities seeking authoritative information about current condition assessment technologies and options: the AWWA Manual M77 Condition Assessment of Water Mains.
The new M77 manual slated for official release sometime in2018was researched, written, reviewed, and consensus-approved by AWWA volunteer committees comprised of leading industry players and top experts, including water utilities, technology providers, consulting engineers, scientists, and other industry specialists, collaborating to create an informative guide to meet the needs of today’s public and private water providers and utilities.
“The M77 Pipeline Condition Assessment manual is a landmark achievement for helping utilities seeking to learn about condition assessment and leak detection,” says Marc Bracken, Vice President & General Manager for Mueller Water Products and founder of Echologics, the leading brand of pipeline condition assessment and leak detection products and technologies.
“The AWWA M77 Condition Assessment of Water Mains manual is a landmark achievement for helping utilities seeking to learn about condition assessment and leak detection,” says Marc Bracken, Vice President & General Manager for Mueller Water Products and founder of Echologics, the leading brand of pipeline condition assessment and leak detection products and technologies.
“The M77 manual is a validated and peer-reviewed compilation of the latest condition assessment approaches, available technologies, and industry best practices,” Bracken says. “It enables utilities and owners to understand precisely what tools are available in today’s asset management toolbox, and the best ways to use those tools to assess the true condition of their pipelines and make better decisions about upgrading or replacing their water distribution infrastructure.”“The collaborative process worked very well,” says Kevin Laven, Echologics Technical Services VP, one of the co-authors of the AWWA manuals on both condition assessment (M77) and leak detection (M36). “I believe that once released, the American Water Works Association (AWWA) M77 manual will demonstrate the true value of including every technology and vendor at the table, sharing experiences of different organizations using various technologies, and analyzing data from field trials and results of third-party efforts validating the technologies.
“The M77 manual is a validated and peer-reviewed compilation of the latest condition assessment approaches, available technologies, and industry best practices,” Bracken says. “It enables utilities and owners to understand precisely what tools are available in today’s asset management toolbox, and the best ways to use those tools to assess the true condition of their pipelines and make better decisions about upgrading or replacing their water distribution infrastructure.”
Collaborative development
The American Water Works Association (AWWA) M77 manual is being assembled from the collaborative efforts of dozens of contributing industry authors, with chapter editors collecting, organizing, and distilling the contributed information into individual chapters devoted to specific topics. An editorial panel reviewed each chapter as it was completed, responding to comments and suggestions for improvement with specific changes and edits, and deciding each chapter’s readiness for publication by vote.
An ongoing challenge facing volunteers participating in the M77 manual development process was considering carefully all the available data before making a judgment, and being particularly careful of overreliance on anecdotal evidence—especially when building consensus among a large group of experts with differing experiences and opinions about various approaches or technologies.
“In the end, the collaborative process worked out quite well,” says Kevin Laven, Echologics Technical Services VP, one of the co-authors of the AWWA manuals on both condition assessment (M77) and leak detection (M36). “The final released version of the American Water Works Association (AWWA) M77 manual will demonstrate the true value of including every technology and vendor at the table, sharing experiences of different organizations using various technologies, and analyzing data from field trials and results of third-party efforts validating the technologies.”
“I have to commend the American Water Works Association, because they have a very well-defined process and standard of practice for producing and publishing these industry manuals,” says Dave Johnston, Echologics Director Technical Services, also one of the co-authors of the M77 chapters on condition assessment and leak detection.
“Many water providers and utilities are evaluating and using today’s advanced condition assessment and leak detection technologies, but some that may not be as technologically sophisticated and unaware of what tools are available,” Johnston says. “We hope the M77 manual will help disseminate this knowledge, and make it clear to the industry that these approaches are available, and they are industry best practices.”
Condition assessment “arrives”
Industry experts stress that no single condition assessment approach is appropriate for all situations, often describing condition assessment as an end-to-end process. The process involves initially applying the least costly and least disruptive condition assessment methods to the water distribution system to isolate potentially troublesome pipes, then successively introducing more costly and invasive condition assessment methods to identify precisely which pipes need repair or replacement.
Often illustrated in diagrams to resemble an “inverted pyramid,” the condition assessment process is similar to how medical professionals assess patients using non-invasive diagnostic technologies such as CAT scans or x-rays before turning to more invasive diagnostic methods like exploratory surgery.
“Applying noninvasive, non-disruptive Echologics condition assessment technology is a similar approach for water utilities,” says Echologics’ Kevin Laven.“Start by evaluating a pipeline using simple ‘desktop’ methods, deploy noninvasive condition assessment technologies to reveal potential trouble spots, then move to more costly and invasive methods to confirm the pipe condition and decide what to do about it.”
“The American Water Works Association (AWWA) M77 manual does not suggest following a single approach or technology to cover all situations confronting utilities because condition assessment is still a domain of growing expertise,” says Echologics’ Dave Johnston. “However, the ‘best practices’ of the future are contained within the M77 manual, and we will soon see the industry standardize and normalize those best practices based on what is the most economical, most effective, and most practical.”
The publication of the M77 manual and the standardization of best practices sends a strong signal to the industry that advanced condition assessment and leak detection technologies have officially “arrived”—but this achievement didn’t happen overnight, according to Echologics CEO Marc Bracken.
“Over the past 12 years, we have we constantly evolved, improved, and refined our products and technologies while inspecting more than 6,500 miles of water pipeline, a distance roughly equivalent to crossing the continental United States three times,” says Bracken. “Our technology has ‘arrived’ because it has been tested and proven over time by leading utilities across North America—and there are vast stretches of aging pipeline infrastructure around the world yet to be inspected.”
before initiating annual street reconstruction projects scheduled for summer months. Condition assessments have revealed pipelines with as much as 50% wall thickness loss, and may have contributed to Edina avoiding catastrophic water main failures for the past few years. Edina has adopted a policy of automatic replacement of any pipes with 30% or more pipe-wall loss, because even marginally reduced pipe wall integrity creates substantial risk of broken water mains from ground movement caused by frost during severe Minnesota winters.
In order to better accurately determine the structural integrity of its aging pipelines and the methods for addressing them, New Jersey American Water has since integrated ePulse condition assessment to its methodology toolbox and now uses it annually. This has improved how the utility estimates the number of useful years left in its pipe segments, enabling Wolan and his team to make more educated decisions about its pipeline rehabilitation programming. “It’s giving us more data and more data is always good for making effective decisions,” Wolan said.
This information gives us the ability to schedule a lot of these repairs, as opposed to doing them on an emergency basis, and that reduces customer impacts,” Mack said. “It keeps them in water service during their critical business hours, so that we’re only taking them out of water service to make these repairs at a time that has been coordinated. That gives them some reliability—we as a water agency aren’t just going to go out there and shut off their water service randomly.”
“For military installations across the U.S.—very much like municipalities—the investment into the infrastructure has varied over the last 50 years,” says Nason. “We’ve been working to get a handle on this infrastructure that we now own and operate under the contract with the U.S. Department of Defense. I’ve got a lot of historic information, and I’ve built capital improvement plans based on that.”