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7 best data practices for water asset management
Managing water utility infrastructure assets is a balancing act between levels of service, performance, cost and risk. Optimizing that balance requires high-quality, trustworthy, well-structured data.
Executing a digital strategy
The Black & Veatch 2025 Water Report, which surveyed 680 U.S. water industry stakeholders, shows that 60% of water, wastewater and stormwater utilities have a data or digital solution strategy. They cited their top objectives as cybersecurity, asset monitoring, measurement and analysis, and process automation. Utilities know the data flowing from their Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT) systems represent untapped value. Having a digital strategy is one thing. Executing it and turning vision into measurable outcomes makes all the difference.
For example, Black & Veatch is currently helping a major wastewater utility transition from managing assets using disparate spreadsheets to a computerized maintenance management system and digital Power Platform solution. The solution enables proactive KPI monitoring through dynamic dashboards that are refreshed daily.
For many utilities, though, figuring out how to start or make progress can be daunting. Less than half of respondents to the Black & Veatch 2025 Water Report survey who reported having a digital solutions strategy said they were achieving some, most or all of their objectives. Just 4% reported that they were achieving all objectives. 28% reported that they are still working to define their digital strategy objectives.
There is no one-size-fits-all path for every digital journey, but Black & Veatch recommends the following seven overarching best practices.
7 best practices for optimizing utility data
1. Begin with a roadmap. Assess your utility’s current situation then prioritize high-return-on-investment (ROI) use cases to build a phased roadmap. This will guide your digital transformation toward more integrated, high-value operations.
2. Create a single source of truth. Consolidate data overload into a governed, centralized architecture.
3. Turn insight into action. Deploy business intelligence, analytics and visualization tools that put actionable insights on a silver platter for stakeholders, from operators to the board.
4. Standardize for compliance. Harmonize data collection, reporting and governance to meet your regulatory demands and sustainability goals.
5. Manage risk predictively. Leverage digital tools that support proactive, predictive and continuous asset management.
6. Capture institutional knowledge. Embed veteran know-how into business logic within digital workflow before workforce transitions and retirements widen the skills gap.
7. Adopt emerging tech wisely. Define where AI, machine learning (ML) and advanced analytics will add real value to organizational goals. Then pilot and implement them incrementally, on top of a strong foundation of high-quality, trustworthy and well-structured data.
The importance of digital asset management for water systems
As the Black & Veatch 2025 Water Report shows, the focus on digital asset management for water systems is increasing, and success requires more than just technology. It also demands change management, training and data governance to maximize ROI. As experienced staff retire, capturing knowledge and designing automated workflows become both urgent and critical. Meanwhile, AI offers extraordinary promise but only when utilities select the right use cases, build out using high quality data and understand how to integrate predictions effectively.
Wherever a utility is on its digital journey, increasing data maturity can mitigate risk, reduce lifecycle costs, sharpen reporting accuracy and increase regulatory compliance. Most utilities have made a large investment in collecting data. The next step is squeezing the data for every drop of value by putting a focused strategy into action.
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