Tracking Progress

T he water industry depends on continuous improvement to deliver safer, more reliable water services.In pursuing those improvements, water professionals have expanded their reliance on data-driven approaches, but utilities need more high-quality data to support their decisions and provide metrics to track their progress.Better utility planning and operation, based on science and supported by experience, will lead to better water quality and happier customers.AWWA's Water and Wastewater Rate Survey collects key rate, financial, and utility operating information, while the AWWA Compensation Survey provides an extensive compilation of salary and compensation data for water and wastewater professionals.Likewise, AWWA uses its State of the Water Industry survey to benchmark professional attitudes and to identify future challenges and opportunities.As discussed in this month's cover story, AWWA's Utility Benchmarking Program collects and analyzes data across a range of utility types, regions, and sizes to provide an informative set of performance indicators based on current and historical trends.Utility managers can take this kind of approach to track their progress and understand how their systems compare with others.Lee County Utilities and its team used its operational data to establish performance metrics, then compared its performance with similar utilities and identified ways to improve its efficiency and resilience.Benchmarking helps utilities assess their performance, validate internal measures, gain stakeholder confidence, and support performance improvement initiatives.Another feature article this month describes how the City of Minneapolis uses levels of service to advance improvements.Levels of service are statements of outputs or objectives that water utilities or their activities intend to deliver to customers and stakeholders; they can help utilities develop performance management programs to monitor their asset management efforts and track overall progress.Besides guiding resources toward critical assets and activities, this approach can be used to organize and motivate staff around organizational goals, track and communicate progress, and define success.Also featured this month: New Braunfels Utilities applied historical data and staff experience to improving its flood resilience with standard operating procedures and engineered controls.Collecting similar climate-related data now will allow utilities to more effectively plan and budget for adoption in the future.In the face of growing challenges and sophisticated solutions, water professionals need to stay connected, and Journal AWWA remains a vital source of understanding; please consider sharing your experiences and informed outlooks by contacting me at journaleditor@awwa.org.