A 'CIPP First' Approach Changes Community from Reactive Scramblers to Proactive Believers

摘要

This paper will illustrate how the poorest community in the state of Massachusetts doubled down and took a proactive “CIPP First” approach to sewer rehabilitation that proved to be four times more cost effective than their historical approach of doing nothing and waiting for the next open-cut emergency.Today’s cities are struggling to keep up with their “out of sight, out of mind” collection system assets. Though most municipal officials are aware that better maintenance leads to a more stable system, large-scale investigation and maintenance programs are perceived to be expensive. With municipal budgets getting spread thin and pressure to keep rates low, community leaders have the tendency to cut proactive maintenance and inspection programs, cross their fingers and “let the next guy worry about failure”.The City’s “run it to failure” model worked for several decades but luck was running out. With an average system age of 97 years old, an historical on-call excavation cost of more than $800/LF and a system replacement rate at a fraction of a percentage, change was desperately needed. The “CIPP First” approach consisted of reversing the trend and proactively spending money on engineering services to assess infrastructure and identify pipe defects that could be rehabilitated with CIPP before necessitating emergency excavation. In three years, for less than $200/LF the City cleaned, assessed, prioritized, designed and rehabilitated miles of pipe using CIPP. The success of this program has facilitated four times the rehabilitation without raising rates and gave a City hope of a sustainable collection system.