National Infrastructure Maintenance Strategy - Construction Industry ...

That some water boards budget adequately for
maintenance, and do spend that funding
appropriately, is a reflection of the following:
• strong revenue streams; and
• adequate skills (especially technical skills) and
experience.
Unpacking the first of these causes, the following
appear to be the greatest contributors to the
adequacy of revenue and budgets:
• being willing to raise tariffs to cover actual
costs, and being successful in raising these
tariffs (presumably at least partly because they
are one removed from the end users of water);
and
• strong credit control.
The following are some of the benefits of adequate
skills and funding:
• being adequately resourced, these water
boards are able to hire and retain competent
staff, and, if they outsource, they are able to
competently manage their contractors and get
better value for money;
• skills and experience in improving income and
reducing cost; including strong credit control;
• skills and experience to plan and implement
appropriate maintenance programmes; and
• being conscientious about their statutory
responsibilities, for example relating to
pressure vessels and water treatment works,
and the need to maintain this infrastructure.
Current initiatives to enhance maintenance
Water boards are being included in the current
formulation process by DWAF of a national water
services infrastructure asset management
strategy.
Summary
In summary, the larger water boards are managing
to hold maintenance backlogs at a low level. Some
of the smaller water boards do, however, face
significant and increasing maintenance backlogs.
f. Water resources infrastructure in ownership
of national government
Overview of DWAF water resources and bulk
supply infrastructure and service delivery
DWAF is responsible for the management of the
nation's water resources and the provision of raw
water in bulk through water resource
infrastructure to various institutions and direct
consumers. The DWAF water resources and bulk
supply infrastructure comprises dams, weirs,
canals, pumpstations, pipelines, siphons and
tunnels.
State of infrastructure and state of maintenance
DWAF has reasonably up-to-date records of the
location and capacity of assets, and of their
maintenance history. However records of
condition vary - DWAF has chosen to focus its
infrastructure asset management attention on the
most strategic elements of infrastructure.
In particular, DWAF has in recent years focused on
the management of its dams. The National Water
Act (Chapter 12) makes DWAF responsible for
ensuring that measures are taken to improve the
safety of its dams. However, DWAF is currently
unable to comply, because it has not had sufficient
funds to adequately address the safety of dams.
Many of the dams have reached a state where
further postponement of necessary maintenance
and refurbishment will result in serious cost
escalations as their conditions deteriorate. This is
further compounded by the fact that DWAF
inherited a large number of ex-homeland dams
which were not operated and maintained properly,
and which continue to require urgent attention.
One hundred and fifty of DWAF's 350 dams have
"significant dam safety shortcomings". Priority
rankings have been allocated, and the remediation
(i.e. refurbishment) programme will be starting
during the current financial year.
DWAF indicates in respect of the rest of its
infrastructure, i.e. other than of dams, that it will
have to spend "significant amounts to bring it up to
an acceptable standard". In particular,
national infrastructure maintenance strategy
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