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These are challenging times for water utilities thanks to regulatory demands, customerexpectations, and changing technology. The push for continuous improvement has beenfacilitated, in part, by programs like QualServe. Designed specifically for water and wastewaterutilities, QualServe is a voluntary continuous improvement program started in 1996. Its primaryobjectives are to help individual utilities improve overall operations and enhance customersatisfaction and create a culture of continuous improvement among utilities.By providing self-assessment, peer review, and performance indicators (metric benchmarking),QualServe offers utilities the tools for continuous improvement - to assess, measure change, andrepeat. QualServe has been recognized as a very valuable program by all who have participated.However, to date, it is estimated that the program has just 2% market penetration. So why are sofew utilities taking advantage of it? Could QualServe itself be ready for improvement?That was the question posed in AwwaRF project 3138, "Enhancement of Water Utility Self-Assessment Tools to Improve Utility Operations." The project was created to critically evaluateexisting QualServe tools to:identify opportunities to enhance the tools based on current standards of practice; improve utility awareness of, and access to, the tools and improve the delivery mechanism; and, overcome barriers to utility participation.This paper examines the results of this research that evaluated existing tools andconsidered the overall programmatic approach. This research showed that the QualServe program has been a valuable tool for utilities seekingcontinuous improvement but its potential remains largely untapped. The paper discusseshow QualServe is being updated to more fully integrate performance indicators and the self-assessmentand peer-review process. Includes figure.

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Edition: Vol. - No. Published: 02/01/2007 Number of Pages: 4 File Size: 1 file , 140 KB