Strategic tools to support the most effective
and efficient use of a utility's resources have
become critically important to a utility's planning
process. Using the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency's capacity, management, operations,
and maintenance program (CMOM) as a
guide, the water division of the Orange County
Utilities Department in Orlando, Florida, developed
a performance management plan to address the
challenges of a rapidly growing population and
stretched water resources.
Originally developed for wastewater utilities,
CMOM addresses all aspects of the
Orange County Utilities organization, with
specific focuses on water utility management
and operations, financial considerations, water
treatment maintenance issues, public health
protection, regulatory compliance, and safety.
The Water CMOM program showed the
gaps in the utility's organization, provided a
method to prioritize and implement gap closure
projects, and aligned the final recommendations
of the assessment with the utility's
goals and mission statement.
The program created a repeatable process
that can measure how the utility is performing,
re-analyze the utility periodically, show gaps in
performance, develop plans to close those gaps,
and remeasure the utility using performance
indicators and industry-accepted metrics. Includes figures.