Application of high reliability theory in the water utility sector

In the literature, a need was identified to consider the provision of drinking water to bea ‘high reliability’ societal service. This thesis reports on an investigation into thetechnical and organisational reliability of a defined section in the water utility sectorand a Regional Water Utility. Here, the organisational reliability in operations andincident management, and, secondly, the management of technical reliability of watersupply systems arising from risk-based asset management were the emphasis of thisproject.In order to substantiate this investigation, three main research components weredesigned and conducted: firstly, a characterisation of the nature of incidents and theirimpact on customers; secondly, an investigation into organisational capabilities tomanage incidents and its role in maintaining a resilient water supply system thatminimises the impact of incidents on customers, and thirdly, an investigation into riskbasedasset management strategies that provide and maintain the technical reliability ofthe water supply system. In the latter perspective, the opportunity to learn from previousincidents to enhance asset risk assessments was investigated.In this study, it was found that many HRO principles are readily observable in the waterutilities that participated in this research. Following the characterisation of incidents, itis demonstrated that the observation of HRO principles during incident management hasa positive effect on the overall reduction of incident impacts on customers. Beyond theimmediate effect of HRO principles in incident management, it could be demonstratedthat ‘learning from failure’ provides a mechanism to understand and manage futurerisks. The concept of incident meta-analysis is introduced that compares series of pastincidents with documented perceived, future risks. The statistical analysis of incidenttime series facilitated the monitoring of incident trends, the validation of the risk modelused in the Regional Water Utility and the verification of risk data, in particular for therisk components ‘probability, cause, effect and impact’.