Untangling a Municipal Utility's Operational Ecosystem

OVERVIEW

This municipality's Water and Sewer Department serves a large population and interacts with nearly every other department in the town government — from Engineering and IT to Finance, HR, Buildings, and Budgeting. Leadership recognized that operational inefficiencies were compounding across departments, but lacked a clear picture of where the problems originated and how they cascaded. Raybern was contracted to perform a holistic utility operational evaluation — not just of the Water and Sewer Department, but of every peripheral department that interacts with and provides services to it.

Raybern's methodology went far beyond a typical departmental audit. The evaluation considered not only the operational processes within the Water and Wastewater Departments, but also the peripheral town departments that interact with and provide services to Water and Sewer. Raybern created high-level operational workflows documenting the interactions between departments, built a system architecture map of all shared and individual tools, and identified potential technology improvements and staffing impacts through anonymous surveys and in-person workshops. The initial anonymous survey received 22 responses representing 42% of the department's overall staff, covering communication, training, operational tasking, and tools/platforms used to complete daily tasks.

The survey responses revealed several concerning patterns. The staff was relatively young in terms of tenure in their current positions, meaning institutional knowledge was thin. Most staff were aware that SOPs existed somewhere, but based on training responses, those SOPs appeared to be outdated or not actively used. The majority of tasking was done by word of mouth with some email and service orders — creating significant opportunity for miscommunication and errors. Tools and software usage was inconsistent: seasoned staff could name the tools they used regularly, but less experienced staff appeared to either not be aware of available tools, had not been trained on them, or simply didn't use them. This indicated that training was either incomplete or lacking for newer employees.

Raybern conducted in-person workshops with every division and peripheral department. The findings painted a picture of an organization struggling with systemic dysfunction. Water Department Management reported that staffing was their most critical issue — difficult to find quality resources, constant turnover keeping most staff in perpetual training mode, and no capacity for the projects that would save time and money. Projects were consistently underfunded by the time they could be started because costs rose during delays. There was no onboarding or offboarding process, no succession planning, and the hiring process was prohibitive due to a policy requiring that positions not be posted until the incumbent actually left. The Water Plant was being managed by a single division head who was relied upon for everything from facilities maintenance to IT support to copier repair. Three of the current operators were eligible for retirement within five years with no succession plan in place. The SCADA system was running on Windows XP and Windows 7 — both with known security vulnerabilities — on unsupported software with no documentation. Wastewater operations were siloed from the rest of the town, lacked SOPs and disaster recovery plans, had inadequate transportation (three vehicles for ten staff), and were using an asset management system that only one person knew how to operate. Field Services had disbanded their construction crew, created a homegrown work order and inventory system, and were dealing with leaking facilities inherited from a district absorption that came with more staff and equipment but no space to accommodate them.

The workshops with peripheral departments revealed that the dysfunction was not contained within Water and Sewer — it radiated outward. Customer Service was dealing with staffing shortages that prevented shut-offs suspended during COVID from being reinstated, manual payment arrangement processes, and a phone system that may have been physically failing. Finance reported that several capital projects had been funded for the Water/Sewer Department but never executed, and that the meter changeover had been sitting in the Capital Improvement Plan for over ten years with money going into the budget as a placeholder. IT flagged that security was not a priority for the department, that the SCADA system needed immediate replacement with IT involvement in the selection process, and that the department projected an 'Us vs Them' attitude that created tension. HR noted that there were multiple unions to navigate, no formal onboarding or training plans, and that the department brought labor issues to HR without conveying urgency — then blamed HR for lack of support. Engineering reported poor communication stemming from management conflicts that had trickled down to staff, and that the Water/Sewer Administrator was a bottleneck to projects. The Lab Manager was overburdened with regulatory compliance work that required administrative support she didn't have, while dealing with a long-tenured employee who created a hostile environment through refusal to comply with management requests. Budgeting revealed that the department had millions of dollars in capital reserves earmarked for projects that weren't being spent, with the Administrator claiming they couldn't get projects off the ground due to lack of project management resources.

Across all departments, Raybern identified the collective pain points that were impacting the Water and Sewer Department's ability to operate efficiently: lack of a centralized communication tool; lack of transparent SOPs; a deeply entrenched siloed mentality ('us vs them'); lack of centralized asset management; hesitancy and unwillingness to adapt to advancing technology; poor to minimal formal training with no cross-functional training; no succession planning; antiquated and underperforming systems; a pervasive 'that's how we've always done it' mentality; and lack of process enforcement from upper management. The department was organized and operated as if it were an autonomous district rather than a department within the town government — a structural issue that had created and reinforced the siloed culture.

Raybern delivered eight prioritized recommendations for operational improvement, ordered by criticality. First: prioritize the SCADA purchase for the Water Plant, with IT involvement in selection and implementation to ensure security requirements and support redundancy. Second: consolidate the disparate work order and asset management systems through a comprehensive town-wide Asset Management System integrated with the town's GIS, providing inventory tracking, electronic work orders, and accurate project costing. Third: execute a selection process for a meter replacement and AMI system to reduce operational expense from managing failing meters, potentially increase revenue, and provide transparent usage information to customers. Fourth: initiate a town-wide training program providing transparency about standard operational procedures across all departments. Fifth: implement a town-wide ticketing system to facilitate interdepartmental communication with service level agreements. Sixth: roll the Water and Sewer Department under the Public Works umbrella to improve communications and break down silos. Seventh: cross-train utility billing, collections, and customer service on water/sewer billing procedures with clear role definitions. Eighth: investigate an alternative permitting system or invest in town-wide training for the current system.