July-August 2024 Updates from JD Solomon Solutions

Our current work continues related to improvements to the preventative maintenance (PM} program and developing standard instructions for maintenance.

For the rest of 2024, our updates have moved to July-August, September-October, and November-December. Thank you for your positive feedback on our brief Touchpoints email in July.

Hot Topics

Our insights are inspired by the interesting projects and people we encounter. These new articles have generated the most interest over the past two months.

Program Development

How Many Engineers Do Local Governments Need?

Environment

Environmental Root Cause Analysis

Has the Supreme Court's Sackett Decision on Wetlands Changed Anything?

Asset Management

Risk Using Risk Matrices & Monte Carlo Analysis

Featured Project

Our reliability and asset management work with Kansas City Water continues. The focus has been on improvements to the preventative maintenance (PM} program and developing standard instructions for maintenance. JD Solomon and Dion Trost provide primary support for the project.

Upcoming Free Webinar

September 26, 2024 – Register today!

How to Effectively Communicate System Redundancy (with the Four Horsemen)

System redundancy is often misunderstood in asset management and reliability circles. Learn how to communicate what redundancy is (and what it is not). Become better informed on how redundancy impacts criticality and risk. You’ll also meet the Four Horsemen.

About the Presenter

JD Solomon is the presenter.

Hosted by Communicating with FINESSE.

Register

Facilitating Technical Teams

Facilitation is primarily a soft skill. In theory, expert facilitators can facilitate anything. However, in practice, we succeed in breaking facilitation into two classifications. General facilitation covers board retreats, strategic plans, regional & local planning, and resolving disputes. Specialized facilitation covers technical issues like root cause analysis, failure modes & effects analysis (FMEA), fault trees, reliability block diagrams, and other activities where subject matter knowledge is important.

Using an outside facilitator is important. Contact us for more information about our facilitation solutions.

WEASC Operator Conference

The 37th annual Water Environment Association of South Carolina (WEASC) Operator Conference will be held in Myrtle Beach on October 28 - 30, 2024. JD Solomon will provide two sessions on “Five Aspects of Work Management that Impact Maintenance & Reliability.”

Communicating with FINESSE

Founded by JD Solomon, our associate organization, Communicating with FINESSE, is a not-for-profit community of technical professionals dedicated to being highly effective communicators and facilitators. The elements of the FINESSE fishbone diagram® are Frame, Illustrate, Noise reduction, Empathy, Structure, Synergy, and Ethics. Learn more about our publications, webinars, workshops, and training opportunities.

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JD Solomon Inc. provides solutions for program development, asset management, and facilitation at the nexus of facilities, infrastructure, and the environment. Sign up for monthly updates related to our firm.

How Many Engineers Do Local Governments Need?

Projects in the public sector are slowed by the amount of engineering resources that local governments have.

Why does it take so long to develop a major project in the public sector? Have you ever considered why public-sector capital project delivery can’t keep up with community growth? There are certainly a couple of layers to these questions, but here I'll shed some light on the five project management challenges for local government. More importantly, we’ll give some rules of thumb on how many engineers a local government needs.

What’s an Engineer?

The title "engineer" in the U.S. can refer to a broad range of professionals with varying levels of education, licensure, and responsibility, depending on the industry and specific job role.

A licensed engineer meets specific education, experience, and examination requirements. Licensure is required to practice engineering in many fields where public safety is concerned, such as civil, structural, or electrical engineering. The title "Professional Engineer" (PE) is legally protected.

Technicians, technologists, and inspectors apply engineering principles in practical settings, often working alongside engineers. Where public health and safety is concerned, a licensed professional engineer is legally responsible for reviewing and accepting their work.

What Are the Functions of an Engineering Department?

Planning & Zoning Case Reviews

Engineering departments work alongside city and county Planning & Zoning Departments to review and approve new projects by private developers. In this case, engineers need primary expertise in transportation, stormwater, and public utilities.

Capital Project Design

Designing and permitting new capital projects funded by the unit of local government is a primary responsibility of the engineering department. In some cases, small projects will be performed turnkey by in-house resources. In most cases, projects are designed and permitted by third-party engineers and architects.

Construction Inspections and Administration

The engineering department is responsible for construction inspection and administration for all projects, whether implemented by a private developer or by the local government. Third-party inspectors and construction managers may supplement large projects, but the department remains responsible for the quality of the final product.

Special Initiatives

Stormwater quantity and quality programs usually fall under the engineering department, as do special studies and assessments for new economic development projects. The engineering department also leads special projects like Americans with Disability Act (ADA) compliance, building management, physical security, and disaster recovery.

Engineering Standards

Engineering standards must be updated regularly to reflect changes in building codes, fire codes, state transportation standards, new construction methodologies, and new products.

Engineering Staffing Levels

Many standard sources leave this pivotal question unanswered. The caveats for not having a specific, recommended number are as follows: population size, geographic area, existing infrastructure condition, amount of new growth, system complexity, system automation, and existing staff capabilities. What’s left out is that most local governments don’t have formal work processes.

With all of that said, these are a few rules of thumb:

Total Number of Engineering Staff

The answer is somewhere between 5 and 15 percent of total staff. That’s based on number of people, not payroll. For a town with 200 staff, plus or minus 20 people in the engineering department is about right.

Total Number of Engineers

The rule of thumb is one engineer for every four non-engineer staff (1 in 5 should be an engineer). That means a 20-person engineering staff should include five engineers. Ironically, most engineering departments have five functions (see above).

Engineering Staff for Large Capital Programs

This category is best evaluated on a dollar-volume basis, mainly because it includes many things that may or may not be in the traditional engineering department. In addition to planning, design, & permitting, construction inspection, and construction management, activities like cost and schedule controls, document management, and public involvement should be included. Between 11 and 18 percent of total construction costs should be allocated for engineering functions within a major capital program.

How Many Engineers Does a Local Government Need?

I have provided a few rules of thumb on how many engineers a local government needs. Hopefully, it's apparent that there are five key functions, and by now, you've concluded that most local governments cannot cover all of them. There's a bigger issue related to business processes and workflows and another one related to workforce development (filling out the organization chart will not get us where we need to go). For today, we start with how many people we need.

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JD Solomon Inc. provides solutions for program development, asset management, and facilitation at the nexus of facilities, infrastructure, and the environment. Sign up for monthly updates related to our firm.

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JD Solomon is the founder of JD Solomon, Inc., the creator of the FINESSE fishbone diagram®, and the co-creator of the SOAP criticality method©. He is the author of Communicating Reliability, Risk & Resiliency to Decision Makers: How to Get Your Boss’s Boss to Understand and Facilitating with FINESSE: A Guide to Successful Business Solutions.

What's the Difference in Criticality and Risk in Your Asset Management Program?

Criticality and risk can be used to determine a place to start.

“We used criticality to start our vulnerability assessments,” a somewhat confused project manager stated. We also use criticality in our emergency response plans. Neither of those seem to match what our asset managers are doing when it comes to determining risk.”  The story is a familiar one, but let's start with the difference between criticality and risk in your asset management program.

What is Criticality?

Criticality is a measure of the relative importance of something to an organization's mission or objectives. I prefer using critical and importance synonymously. Merriam-Webster defines critical as being indispensable or vital.

Overdoing Criticality Analysis

The most common mistake in criticality analysis is overdoing it. Review your business's mission and objectives (verify the context). Then, ask those closest to the action what is most important. Between 20 and 25 percent of your assets or subsystems are most critical.

It doesn't matter why something is important (indispensable, vital). If most people have it on their list, for whatever reason, then it's critical.

Consultants and academics like to overdo criticality by dissecting it and then doing weighting and funny math. As reliability-centered maintenance guru John Moubray wrote in 1992, the criteria and weightings vary widely from company to company and criticality vendor to vendor (and it is still the same 50 years later). As Moubray concludes, "The process of identifying significant items should be quick, approximate, and conservative." Avoid overdoing and overcomplicating your criticality analysis.

 

Criticality in Systems and Reliability Engineering

In systems engineering and reliability engineering, we address systems or subsystems of higher importance to an organization with fault prevention measures. Fault prevention falls into two classes: fault avoidance (usually in de-rating stresses or higher performance criteria) or fault tolerance (usually in the form of redundancy).

 

Some Specific Applications of Criticality

Criticality is primarily used for prioritization.

• Condition Assessments

• Preventative Maintenance Program Improvement

• Work Prioritization

• Inventory Management and Critical Spares

• Predictive Maintenance Programs

• Health and Safety Improvements

• Design or Re-designs

• O&M Budget Development

• CIP Prioritization

• Communications

What is Risk?

Risk is defined as the effect of uncertainty on objectives. A layperson’s definition is risk in the deviation from expectations.

Risk is situationally specific and can be evaluated differently at an organization's corporate, operations, or business unit levels. Risk can also be expressed in over two dozen ways, including the multiplicative product of the consequences and likelihood of failure.

Key Questions When Evaluating Risk

Evaluating risk is richer and more robust than evaluating criticality in your asset management program. Some of the key questions when evaluating risk are:

• What is the context (scenario)?

• Should we use a qualitative or quantitative method?

• Is our data quality commensurate with the assessment methodology?

• How do we establish system boundaries?

• What is our definition of failure?

• Over what period of time are we evaluating risk?

Some Specific Applications of Risk

Risk can be used as a prioritization tool in ways similar to criticality. Risk assessment informs strategies for managing potential problems, such as implementing preventive measures or planning for contingencies.

If a quantification method such as Monte Carlo analysis is used to evaluate risk, risk can be used in measured applications such as:

• Renewal and Replacement Financial Forecasts

• Asset Health Forecasts (Future Condition of Assets)

• Prioritization for Additional Data Collection

• Predictive Maintenance Scheduling

• Capacity Planning and Resource Allocation

What’s the Difference in Your Asset Management Program?

One common misconception is to equate criticality and risk. Criticality is the more general case, and risk applies more granularly. Criticality is often a qualitative assessment (high, medium, low), while risk typically involves qualitative and quantitative analysis (such as risk score combining likelihood and impact or Monte Carlo analysis). Both criticality and risk can be used to determine a place to start, but risk takes more time to assess. Risk is a much more powerful tool when quantification methods are used and is especially helpful for big decisions.

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JD Solomon Inc. provides solutions for program development, asset management, and facilitation at the nexus of facilities, infrastructure, and the environment. Sign up for monthly updates related to our firm.

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JD Solomon is the founder of JD Solomon, Inc., the creator of the FINESSE fishbone diagram®, and the co-creator of the SOAP criticality method©. He is the author of Communicating Reliability, Risk & Resiliency to Decision Makers: How to Get Your Boss’s Boss to Understand and Facilitating with FINESSE: A Guide to Successful Business Solutions.