Full Description

World-wide publicly owned water and wastewater utilities are increasingly lookingto benchmarking as a tool to seek improved performance. Benchmarking has along history of being an effective management process if implemented as part ofan overall performance management program, and while benchmarking has the potential tobe a highly effective management tool, on its own and in isolation from other actions itis entirely useless. Benchmarking must be implemented correctly, and it must belinked to other strategically selected initiatives that result in organizational change.Only through change can organizations improve.In Canada, the Canadian National Water and Wastewater Benchmarking Initiative(now in its fifth annual iteration for wastewater benchmarking, the second for waterbenchmarking, and the first for stormwater benchmarking) is translating the resultsof metric benchmarking into actions that are driving performance improvement.Beyond a mere comparison of benchmarking results, this paper describes how experience from the projecthas taught that the real value of benchmarking lies in identifying areas ofperformance gaps and to work as a team to share experiences and to formulateimprovement strategies focused on specific processes. To solidify this process, theNational Water and Wastewater Benchmarking Initiative has established a numberof process benchmarking task forces to address areas of concern to utilitymanagers. By working as a group instead of individually, benchmarkingparticipants have tapped into an extensive repository of expertise and experiencethat is shared willingly, and can be acquired through in-kind effort andhard work. Includes figures.

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Edition: Vol. - No. Number of Pages: 16 File Size: 1 file , 290 KB