Legal Costs Related to Failure: Costs resulting from legal action by individuals or businesses whose property, livlihood or health is damaged because of failure of an asset

Level of Service: A document defining the way in which the utility customers, owners, managers and operators want the system to perform over the long term

Life Cycle Costing: An assessment of the total costs associated with an asset over the entire period it is owned; includes acquisition costs, total life-time operational costs, potential repair costs, possible rehabilitation costs, and disposal costs

Long-Term Funding Strategy: A plan that indicates the source of money for various activities that the system anticipates in the future, such as O&M, capital expenditures, rehabilitation activities, system upgrades, expansions, etc.; at a minimum, the plan should look 5 years into the future

Preventive Maintenance Procedure: Developed to prevent failure and prolong asset life (e.g. overhaul); systematic inspection, detection, correction, and prevention of incipient failures, before they become actual or major failures

Probability of Failure: A value assigned to each asset that designates its likelihood of failure; usually determined by age, condition, failure history, and general experience and assigned to the asset using a numerical ranking; an important component of determining criticality

Public Health Costs Related to Failure: The impact or potential impact on public heath resulting from the failure of an asset (e.g., an outbreak of gastrointestinal illness resulting from the failure of a chlorination pump)

Rate Capacity: An assessment of how much customers are able or willing to pay for services

Rate Structure: An organized plan for charging the customers of the system for the services provided by the system according to each customer's relative usage of those services; must, at a minimum, cover the operating expenses of the system and should provide funds for debt service and reserves for emergencies, repairs and replacements and the un-funded portions of capital improvements

Rehabilitation: An extensive repair of an asset that returns it to full function; generally intended to significantly extend the life of the asset

Reliability-Centered Maintenance: Developed to assist maintenance managers in predicting asset failures and lessening effects on facilities

Remaining Life of the Asset: An estimate of the length of time an asset can be relied upon to provide useful service

Repair: The returning of an asset to it's full function after a relatively minor failure

Repair & Replacement Reserve: A fund established specifically to build up money to cover the costs of repair and replacing assets

Repair & Replacement Schedule: A list of repairs and replacements anticipated during an upcoming time period (ideally 20 years); should include the year of the repair or replacement, a description, estimated costs, the method of estimation, whether this is a one-time of a recurring cost and the time period of recurrence

Replacement Cost: The total amount of money required to completely replace an asset; should be used as the value of an asset, regardless of the age or actual condition of the asset

Risk Analysis: A procedure for assessing the relative criticality of assets in terms of their liklihood of failure and the consequence of failure

Routine Maintenance Procedures: Simple, small-scale activities associated with regular and general upkeep of buildings, equipment, machines, plant or systems against normal wear and tear; the process of performing regular maintenance tasks, such as lubrication; often can be performed without taking a machine out of service

Social Cost: The cost related to inconvenience, loss of confidence, or disruption of life related to the failure of an asset

Standard Operating Procedure: Specific procedures to be followed during normal, day-to-day operations.

Sustainability: An assessment of the ability of any system to continue to do what it does in the way that it does it for an indefinite period of time