Setting the course for an organizational change management plan with asset and work management business process mapping

PWB Asset Management, Business Mapping, and Change Management

To fulfill their mission of providing water service 24/7 to more than a million customers, the Portland Water Bureau (PWB) utilizes asset management (AM) best practices with a life-cycle approach. As part of their five-year risk management strategic plan, PWB decided to upgrade their outdated AM platform, which manages an asset infrastructure and maintenance costs of more than $16 billion in replacement value.

To make their system stronger, more flexible, and better prepared for the challenges ahead, instead of focusing only on replacing technology, PWB recognized an opportunity to first improve the consistency AM business operations and processes. They reached out to us to help.

Our team documented 26 current state business processes for AM and maintenance work, discussed 460 challenges with the current processes, and identified 86 areas for improvements. We then distilled this into 21 future state business processes to drive consistency in managing their assets and offered 20 recommendations to PWB’s executive team for future implementation of their water asset management (WAMS) solution. One such recommendation included the development of an organization awareness campaign to clearly communicate to employees the reason for proposed changes and their benefits.

Since setting out to update their processes, PWB has used the future state process improvements to create functional and technical requirements that are guiding the configuration of the new AM system. In addition, the have created a project branding and awareness campaign, starting with a logo and name for the new AM system. They have also surveyed employees to learn what they know and don’t know about the new AM system and processes. This helped tailor the communications strategy to build awareness of the upcoming changes.