Smart Metrics Industry Best Practices

Produces “fit for purpose” water and other recovered resources (e.g., energy, nutrients, biosolids) that meet or exceed full compliance with regulatory and reliability requirements and consistent with customer, public health, ecological, and economic needs. Products include treated drinking water, treated wastewater effluent, recycled water, stormwater discharge, and recovered resources.

The Leading Practices for Product Quality are as follows:

Ensures utility leadership and staff work together internally, and coordinate with external partners, to anticipate, respond to, and avoid problems. Proactively identifies, assesses, establishes tolerance levels for, and effectively manages a full range of business risks (including interdependencies with other services and utilities, legal, regulatory, financial, environmental, safety, physical and cyber security, knowledge loss, talent, and natural disaster-related) consistent with industry trends and system reliability goals. Plans for and actively manages around business continuity.

The Leading Practices for Enterprise Resiliency are as follows:

Understands and plans for the full life-cycle cost of utility operations and value of water resources. Establishes and maintains an effective balance between long-term debt, asset values, operations and maintenance expenditures, and operating revenues. Establishes predictable rates— consistent with community expectations and acceptability—adequate to recover costs, provide for reserves, maintain support from bond rating agencies, plan and invest for future needs, and taking into account affordability and the needs of disadvantaged households. Implements sound strategies for collecting customer payments. Understands the opportunities available to diversify revenues and raise capital through adoption of new business models, including revenues from resource recovery.

The Leading Practices for Finacial Viability are as follows:

Ensures ongoing, timely, cost-effective, reliable, and sustainable performance improvements in all facets of its operations in service to public health and environmental protection. Makes effective use of data from automated and smart systems, and learns from performance monitoring. Minimizes resource use, loss, and impacts from day-to-day operations, and reduces all forms of waste. Maintains awareness of information and operational technology developments to anticipate and support timely adoption of improvements.

The Leading Practices for Operational Optimization are as follows:

Takes an active leadership role in promoting and organizing community sustainability improvements through collaboration with local partners (e.g., transportation departments, electrical utilities, planning departments, economic development organizations, watershed and source water protection groups). Manages operations, infrastructure, and investments to support the economic, environmental, and social health of its community. Integrates water resource management with other critical community infrastructure, social and economic development planning to support community-wide resilience, support for disadvantaged households, community sustainability, and livability.

The Leading Practices for Community Sustainability are as follows:

Understands the condition of and costs associated with critical infrastructure assets. Plans infrastructure investments consistent with community needs, anticipated growth, system reliability goals, and relevant community priorities, building a robust set of adaptation strategies (e.g., for changing weather patterns, customer base). Maintains and enhances the condition of all assets over the long-term at the lowest possible life-cycle cost and acceptable risk consistent with customer, community, and regulator-supported service levels. Assures asset repair, rehabilitation, and replacement efforts are coordinated within the community to minimize disruptions and other negative consequences.

The Leading Practices for Infrastructure Strategy and Performance are as follows:

Provides reliable, responsive, and affordable services in line with explicit, customer-derived service levels. Utilizes a mix of evolving communication technologies to understand and respond to customer needs and expectations, including receiving timely customer feedback and communicating during emergencies. Provides tailored customer service and outreach to traditional residential, commercial, and industrial customers, and understands and exercises as appropriate the opportunities presented by emergent customer groups (e.g., high strength waste producers, power companies).

The Leading Practices for Customer Satisfaction are as follows:

Ensures the availability and sustainable management of water for its community and watershed, including water resource recovery. Understands its role in the complete water cycle, understands fit for purpose water reuse options, and integrates utility objectives and activities with other watershed managers and partners. Understands and plans for the potential for water resource variability (e.g., changing weather patterns, including extreme events, such as drought and flooding), and utilizes as appropriate a full range of watershed investment and engagement strategies (e.g., Integrated Planning). Engages in long-term integrated water resource management, and ensures that current and future customer, community, and ecological water- related needs are met.

The Leading Practices for Water Resource Sustainability are as follows:

Recruits, develops, and retains a workforce that is competent, motivated, adaptive, and safety- focused. Establishes a participatory, collaborative organization dedicated to continual learning, improvement, and innovation. Ensures employee institutional knowledge is retained, transferred, and improved upon over time. Emphasizes and invests in opportunities for professional and leadership development, taking into account the differing needs and expectations of a multi- generational workforce and for resource recovery operations. Establishes an integrated and well- coordinated senior leadership team.

Engenders understanding and support from stakeholders (anyone who can affect or be affected by the utility), including customers, oversight bodies, community and watershed interests, and regulatory bodies for service levels, rate structures, operating budgets, capital improvement programs, and risk management decisions. Actively promotes an appreciation of the true value of water and water services, and water’s role in the social, economic, public and environmental health of the community. Actively engages in partnerships, involves stakeholders in the decisions that will affect them, understands what it takes to operate as a “good neighbor,” and positions the utility as a critical asset (anchor institution) to the community.

The Leading Practices for Stakeholder Understanding and Support are as follows: