Vatter, Brandon

Brandon has over 27 years of experience working directly with multiple public and private clients on the regulatory, consulting, water, wastewater and...

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About Vatter, Brandon

Brandon has over 27 years of experience working directly with multiple public and private clients on the regulatory, consulting, water, wastewater and stormwater utility sides to deliver capital, operations, and asset management programs on-time, at or under budget, and in compliance with necessary regulatory obligations. With a strong technical, operations, and project management background, Brandon regularly provides guidance to utilities across the country on necessary capital investments, Best in Class asset management program development and improvements.

Vatter, Brandon

Titles from this speaker

Capital Delivery Optimization and Best Practices

Abstract

This is a historic time in the water, wastewater, and stormwater world of critical needs where $50B in federal funding has been made available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The funding can address legacy projects in need of funding, or new projects that need further planning and development to solve local flooding, watershed water quality, regulatory compliance, or asset management problems in our communities. This new funding coupled with continued supply chain delays and continued construction cost inflation has provided a number of challenges to efficient and cost-effective capital program delivery. Utilities are also facing rate increase pressures and asking if they are planning, designing and constructing their capital program projects in the most efficient and cost-effective manner. Northern Kentucky Sanitation District No. 1 (SD1) was faced with this same challenge to efficiently deliver its capital program amidst rate increase pressures, take advantage of SRF funding, and ramp up its annual capital spending from less than $20M to $150M to meet regulatory and asset management requirements. SD1 decided to not hire an outside program management firm and instead called on existing engineering and operations staff to be the program management team. SD1 had 4.5 FTEs total - one Director of Planning & Design, three Project Managers in the Engineering group and one Collection Systems manager who could dedicate about half his time to capital delivery 4.5 FTEs total. The other half of the Collection Systems manager's time was dedicated to day-to-day sewer and stormwater systems operations. At the height of SD1's capital program, the 4.5 FTEs were delivering $150M of wastewater and stormwater capital projects annually. SD1's experience along with capital delivery utility best practices other communities are implementing will be discussed in this presentation. The following practices communities are using to make their capital delivery and execution programs more efficient and cost-effective will be discussed: Integrated Watershed Management Plans provide watershed roadmaps to prioritize project execution. SD1 followed their Integrated Watershed Management Plans to prioritize projects based on greatest water quality and public health benefits and align new capital projects with existing asset management needs in each watershed. This eliminated the guesswork on whether pipes needed upsizing, what the quantified projects benefits to the ratepayers were, and how regulatory requirements could be met through rehab and repair projects versus costly, new construction. Processes first, complicated software second SD1 kept it simple and used Excel and MS Project to track project schedules and budgets. Communities are taking a close look at the efficiency of their capital programs, annual spending versus encumbrances, their capital delivery tools, and cost estimating process, then making improvements before using complicated program management or schedule software, so current, inefficient processes are not perpetuated in the new software. Accountability & Key Performance Metrics (KPMs) All 4.5 FTEs at SD1 understood the importance of meeting schedule and budget for projects. The same requirements were impressed on the design consultants to keep project execution on budget and schedule. Communities improving their capital delivery to meet best practices are developing KPMs such as Baseline schedule compliance; Baseline budget compliance; Change Orders; Scope Creep; Program Cashflow target compliance to closely monitor projects and communicate clear expectations and accountability for their project delivery staff. Organizational Review. Evaluate spans and layers within the Capital Delivery Division: Review should include: obenchmarking across peers & defining levels and roles & responsibilities for project management and program management staff. oIdentifying support positions and how knowledge will be captured through succession planning. oEstablishing strategies for staff capability development, cross-training and utilization on specialized tasks. oGiving PMs the opportunity to manage all phases of water and sewer projects; Planning, Design and Construction. oIn-house Easement Acquisition and Negotiations SD1 had two field staff that, in addition to their construction oversight work, also negotiated easements for projects. Automation & Rehab/Repair Planning staff in Operations group. a.Automating the process of performing sewer inspections, summarizing results, and clearly defining next action steps can save significant staff time and costs. For SD1, CCTV data was uploaded from the trucks directly to the CMMS at the end of each workday. Each pipe was then automatically scored and a next action generated overnight for either maintenance or structural repair. This information was captured in SD1's CMMS and GIS systems. Similar automation for next action decision-making can be used for water main leak detection and condition assessments. b.For SD1, an Operations staff member reviewed pipe maintenance next actions and simple point repairs were then grouped into efficient work orders for the cleaning & construction crews to complete. c.For SD1, pipes requiring larger scope structural repairs or replacement were filtered and reviewed by four in-house planning staff in the Operations group. These staff reviewed the generated next actions, CCTV data, pipe locations, terrain, etc., to confirm the appropriate type(s) of repairs or replacements. This work resulted in a preliminary planning level design (about 15% design) and cost estimate and helped determine if easements were needed. Projects were grouped together by neighborhood or street and converted into work orders in the CMMS for in-house construction crews or external maintenance contractor crews to complete. Having rehab/repair planning staff in the Operations group greatly increased the efficiency and spending for rehab/replacement of the existing system and allowed SD1's Engineering group to remain focused on the larger design projects to meet schedule and cash flow spending goals. IT, Finance, and Procurement Groups Focused on Project Delivery. Each group adopting and embracing a common mission to assist with efficiently delivering capital projects is critical to capital delivery success. SD1 engineering staff and the managers and staff in each group built relationships, understood each other's communication styles, and removed the 'walls' and 'red-tape' between each group to efficiently plan, design, procure, fund, and construct the projects. Procurement typically took less than one month to get an RFP on the street or advertise for bids. Engineering met regularly with Finance to discuss capital forecasts, cash flow spending and capital versus expense costs. IT was responsible for the GIS and CMMS systems, so IT was integrated with the Engineering and Operations groups and empowered in the day-to-day work to quickly resolve software issues. Streamline Meetings and Empower Staff. Having staff in too many meetings can waste time and delay projects. SD1 developed a process where the Project Manager attended the project meetings and kept the Program Manager, Operations Manager and other Executive level staff informed through either project executive summaries, one-on-one briefings or sometimes both. Operations staff were included in project meetings to help make decisions on design details. Both the PMs and Operations staff were empowered to take ownership of the design project so it was successful. Full support by Executive level leadership and the Board of Directors. Efficient capital delivery and spending involves all levels of the utility with consistent messaging and support from Executive level leadership. Staff are empowered to identify inefficient processes and 'waste' and those processes are changed or staff reorganized with support and change management from Executive level leadership. The staff not willing to change are addressed by Executive level leadership. SD1's Executive Director impressed on staff to run SD1 like a private company where 'profit' was measured as savings to the ratepayers. Those savings were not only cost savings but also efficiency savings. This approach removed red-tape and inefficiencies while also building close relationships that allowed existing staff of about 4.5 FTEs to deliver $100M - $150M of wastewater and stormwater capital projects annually. The audience will learn how Northern Kentucky SD1 and other utilities are implementing best practices to adjust their organizations, maximizing the utilization of existing staff, and supporting automation and other efficiency improvements to increase their capital delivery efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

This paper was presented at the WEF/AWWA Utility Management Conference, February 13-16, 2024.

SpeakerVatter, Brandon

Presentation time

08:30:00

10:00:00

Session time

08:30:00

10:00:00

SessionOptimizing Business Practices

Session number15

Session locationOregon Convention Center, Portland, Oregon

TopicBusiness Practice Optimization / Change Management

Author(s)

Vatter, Brandon

Author(s)B. Vatter1, R. McGillis2, D. Couch

Author affiliation(s)Raftelis Financial Consultants, Inc. 1; Blue Cypress Consulting LLC 2; Sanitation District No 13;

SourceProceedings of the Water Environment Federation

Document typeConference Paper

PublisherWater Environment Federation

Print publication date Feb 2024

DOI10.2175/193864718825159285

Volume / Issue

Content sourceUtility Management Conference

Word count7

Description: How We Can Prioritize and Fix our Drainage Infrastructure Problems, and How We Can...

How We Can Prioritize and Fix our Drainage Infrastructure Problems, and How We Can Pay for It

Abstract

PURPOSE: This presentation will review guiding practices that stormwater program managers can use while working to provide their communities with an increased level of stormwater service. It will consider key questions that program managers face when addressing competing demands of aging stormwater infrastructure, climate challenges, expanding regulatory requirements, and limited local government funds. Lastly, it will also discuss funding options to keep stormwater programs of differing complexities sustainable. DESCRIPTION: Stormwater programs in communities around the U.S. face challenges associated with aging and failing infrastructure, TMDLs and MS4 permit requirements, flooding due to increased intensity rain events, and sewage basement backups. Communities without dedicated stormwater utilities have to meet these increasing demands while competing for limited local government resources. Communities are facing the reality their sanitary and storm sewer assets are deteriorating, and many have reached the end of their useful lives. Consequently, many program managers are struggling to get their head around how to efficiently and cost-effectively manage and renew their assets versus staff 'fighting fires' from the next emergency. Often, we hear, 'We don't have time to plan because we are always putting out fires.' This presentation will present case studies on how SD1 of Northern Kentucky, the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, and other utilities are implementing utility best practices to efficiently and cost-effectively manage their stormwater assets. Key questions they have asked and answered to address these challenges are: 1.How do we prioritize and what criteria should we use to determine which stormwater problems to address first? 2.What should our community's stormwater level of service be for sufficient resiliency for protecting against surface flooding? Can we really protect against a 100-year 24-hour storm, or should we be more concerned about storms that drop 1.5 inches in 15 minutes? How is our level of service changing due to climate change? Can we increase the resiliency of our existing stormwater infrastructure with green infrastructure? 3.How can we use a Stormwater Asset Management (AM) program to comply with our TMDL and other Clean Water Act requirements and address multiple problems with one investment? 4.How do we develop an AM program and maximize its benefits to address the first three questions? 5.Can the stormwater AM program work seamlessly with my current sanitary sewer AM program and complement my regulatory compliance requirements? Consistent with utility best practices and ISO 55001 standards, here are seven guiding practices that SD1 and PWSA applied to their programs to answer the above key questions: 1.Develop the system's staffing structure and asset management team. Everyone in a utility has an important role to play in asset management. It is not just an Operations or Engineering solution. Defining roles and responsibilities for each utility function and having an asset management steering committee comprised of members from the utility functions (i.e., Procurement, HR, IT, Finance, Operations, Engineering etc.) is critical to success. 2.Develop the Utility's Level of Service and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure, track and report to internal and external stakeholders. 3.Develop an Asset Inventory and O&M tracking in a CMMS and GIS to support reporting and data management. 4.Prioritize O&M and Capital investments with defendable and measurable criteria founded in risk management 5.Develop an O&M strategy and logic to support a preventative/predictive program. Automate the logic to gain efficiencies and reduce life-cycle costs. 6.Develop performance metrics, measure to confirm, and implement lessons learned to increase efficiency and reduce costs. 7.Establish a dedicated funding source to ensure all necessary projects are funded BENEFITS OF PRESENTATION: This presentation will provide the audience with a fresh look at how other utilities are implementing stormwater asset management best practices, and discuss tailoring funding approaches to specific program needs. After this session, participants will be able to: -Determine how to ask and answer five key questions to address the challenges of stormwater asset management. -Apply seven guiding principles to their utility to prioritize, budget and fix stormwater system issues. -Review lessons from other utilities on prioritizing and fixing their stormwater problems. -Learn about different strategies for funding a well-planned program fairly and sufficiently. CONCLUSION Reactive operations and maintenance of stormwater and sanitary assets can leave little time for planning and proactive stormwater and sanitary asset management. However, a utility can go from reactive to proactive asset maintenance and management fairly quickly by following the above seven guiding principles in logical achievable steps tailored to its specific needs. These principles can make your utility more efficient, reduce costs, and allow staff time to plan and execute, in addition to performing their daily activities.

This paper was presented at the WEF Collection Systems and Stormwater Conference, April 9-12, 2024.

SpeakerVatter, Brandon

Presentation time

10:45:00

11:15:00

Session time

10:45:00

11:45:00

SessionAsset Management Funding

Session number19

Session locationConnecticut Convention Center, Hartford, Connecticut

TopicAsset Management, Combined Sewer Overflow, Community Engagement, Funding, Operations And Maintenance, Phosphorus, Policy, Legal, Legislation, and Regulation, Tunnels

Author(s)

Vatter, Brandon

Author(s)B. Vatter1, M. Tchamkina1

Author affiliation(s)Raftelis Financial Consultants 1; Raftelis 1

SourceProceedings of the Water Environment Federation

Document typeConference Paper

PublisherWater Environment Federation

Print publication date Apr 2024

DOI10.2175/193864718825159366

Volume / Issue

Content sourceCollection Systems and Stormwater Conference

Word count18

Base text size -

Vatter, Brandon

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