Asset inventory and Waterworks System Assessments will help Northern Saskatchewan municipalities to develop comprehensive view of future financial needs of their assets

Associated Engineering Data Collection teams will visit communities in some of the most remote parts of Saskatchewan's north

Each item valued at $5000 or more, or that is viewed critical to the functional operations of a facility, is photographed and cross-referenced to a data collection form and a facility plan

Data Collection team visits and inventories assets in Weyakwin

Associated Engineering Data Collection teams from across the operation are travelling throughout Northern Saskatchewan collecting tangible capital asset (TCA) and waterworks system assessment (WSA) data from 36 communities.

The project, managed on behalf of the Northern Municipal Trust Account, is led by Ken Turnbull, Manager of Associated Engineering subsidiary ATAP infrastructure Management in Saskatoon. Ken states, "This project will bring significant benefits in infrastructure management to the people of Northern Saskatchewan." The project is composed of three inter-related components.

The first component addresses complete asset inventory for compliance with the Public Service Accounting Board (PSAB) 3150 and WSA of water and sewer systems in Northern Saskatchewan. The new requirement that all Canadian municipalities must report tangible capital assets on the annual statement of financial position beginning in the 2009 financial year requires this part of the project to be complete by December 31, 2009. Most northern communities are also required to complete a waterworks system assessment to assess water and sewage systems and the ability to meet the requirements of the Water Regulations, 2002. The Associated Engineering team will gather WSA data throughout the northern communities concurrently with PSAB data collection. Staff from our Edmonton and St. Catharines offices will compile the information and prepare it for input to a Municipal Asset information System (MAIS) and for a Geographic Information System (GIS). Data will be further supplemented with data collected from government and other databases.

The second component of the project addresses the implementation of a northern pilot project of data collection for the Municipal Asset Information System initiative. The MAIS component will be initiated in a pilot community, the Northern Hamlet of Weyakwin. The first visit to the community to collect data occurred on August 5, 2009. using data collected in the northern MAIS pilot project, the Associated Engineering team will build MAIS Basic IT infrastructure at the provincial level. MAIS Basic will be designed to eventually gather and analyze municipal infrastructure data from all Saskatchewan municipalities. The data collected will be formatted and exported to an Oracle database developed in component three of the project.

The third component is the development of MAIS Basic database, Geographic Information System, and import/export tools at the provincial level. The Municipal Asset Information System will assist Municipal Affairs in gathering information from Saskatchewan municipalities to enable the Ministry to understand the long term funding needs for municipal infrastructure, develop a planned approach to infrastructure funding, and present the case for additional funding to the federal government. A significant benefit of MAIS is that it will encourage Saskatchewan municipalities to better manage their assets. As a result, municipalities will be in a better position to develop a comprehensive view of the future financial needs of their assets.

Vice President and General Manager for Saskatchewan, Bert Munro stated, "This project is an excellent example of Associated Engineering's "one-office" philosophy. The project involves staff from across Canada and highlights our new AssetNav software, the GeoAssets group, and our relationship with VEMAX Management who are subconsultants to our team."

AssetNAV is Associated Engineering's web-delivered software that helps engineers, operators, and financial administrators manage their infrastructure assets in a user friendly and intuitive fashion. AssetNAV is available from GeoAssets, an Associated Engineering subsidiary.

For additional information of AssetNAV, contact Andrew Christopher at christophera@ae.ca or Matt Anderson at
andersonm@ae.ca