The team at Aquify spends a lot of time talking to municipal managers (from around the country) about their systems and challenges. Because municipal managers and staff are under ethical restrictions about promotional material, we’ve left off direct attribution. But their insights are candid and illuminating, so we thought we’d share.
The Biggest Challenges
- “A lot of the public works infrastructure is aging faster than it can be replaced. Changing climate and weather patterns are also impacting infrastructure resilience, requiring more resources to design and install resilient systems. Tech has an important role here.”
- “Governments are very skilled at collecting data, but often lack the vision to translate that data into customer service improvement. We have to do a better job communicating with our customers, managing expectations and responding directly to their service needs. For example, a customer may be less concerned with their water service being out than they are with knowing when it will be restored. Giving customers real-time information in a format they can easily consume is key.”
- “Generating sufficient revenue to keep pace with needed infrastructure replacement (particularly given flat to declining water consumption trends) is a major challenge for local governments throughout the United States. Local governments must look at long-term financial models and balance fixed vs. consumption-based rate models to ensure adequate resources are available to replace aging infrastructure before it fails.”
Ultimate objective: Value for Constituents
- “The driving force behind any innovation is a desire to be more effective, efficient, or responsive to your constituents. It’s important to make the connection to an outcome that truly provides value to the community. After all, it is our residents’ money that we are the stewards of. For me, a trigger for innovation is when the risk of not changing is greater than the risk of innovating.”
- “The most important consideration in evaluating innovative solutions is the impact on the customer. By asking ourselves what the customer wants to know, when they want to know and what do they want to pay for it, we are able to target solutions that are not only cost-effective but also improve customer experience.”
About the Public’s Attention and Focus:
- “When you are losing millions of gallons of water each year, it’s mine and my team’s jobs to do something about it. The truth is that there is enormous potential to save money and save water at virtually every water system in the country. I really believe that.”
- “Most end use customers are unfamiliar with water loss and non-revenue water. For most, water is not a high-attention commodity. They just want their water clean, always on, and at the lowest practical cost. It’s really that simple for them. So, we view innovation through whether it will help us deliver on these simple objectives.”
Why Now?
- “The answer, it comes down to seeing an opportunity to invest in new technology that is going to help us operate our water system more cost-effectively, and with fewer disruptions. Moreover, we can all agree that tackling a small leak early before it become a big leak later is just good management.”
- “The age of our infrastructure, no question. While we continue to invest in improvements that will extend the life of the existing infrastructure, we are nonetheless reaching a point where large replacement costs are inevitable. Here again, this is why smart technology is so important. It helps us save water and therefore money, allowing us to put those resources into infrastructure. Smart technology allows us to make more data-driven decisions about what infrastructure to replace first.”
- “As the community’s water system ages, water loss naturally increases. By utilizing technology now to assess the current condition, we can target specific improvements to the system to reduce water loss and target problem areas. These improvements can address more than just water loss, including flow, pressure and fire suppression.”
Why The Aquify Solution?
- “While the long-term benefits of Aquify’s advanced monitoring system were clear, we are excited to be seeing results so soon. The results of these early interventions will compound and produce significant cost savings for us. Ultimately, this system will not only benefit the community financially, but also help create a more sustainable future.”
- “First and foremost, residents and businesses benefit from having a more stable water utility system overall, with better technology to pinpoint possible system disruptions or failures. Secondly, the Village will be able to better target system isolation when a disruption or failure occurs, minimizing inconvenience for its customers.”
- “As the community’s water system ages, water loss naturally increases. By utilizing technology now to assess the current condition, we can target specific improvements to the system to reduce water loss and target problem areas. These improvements can address more than just water loss, including flow, pressure and fire suppression.”