3.9 Updating and Maintaining the Asset Inventory

It is crucial that the asset inventory be routinely updated and consistently maintained. New assets must be added to the inventory as soon as they are installed. Newly discovered assets (such as a pipe that is found during a road construction project or a valve that was paved over that is found in a construction project) should also be added to the inventory. Data on condition, useful life, and value will change over time as the asset ages, is maintained, repaired, or rehabilitated. These changes need to be reflected in the inventory.

Assets that are repaired or rehabilitated through the normal operation process can be revised within the inventory files throughout the year. Other assets that have not been examined, should be revised every year or two to make sure the asset inventory remains up to date and accurate.

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If maintaining the inventory becomes such a burden that the quality and quantity of data can not be kept up to date, the utility has a few choices:

1. Increase resources (personnel or money) to allow for the additional data collection
2. Reexamine the definition of an asset to reduce the overall number of assets
3. Reduce the overall amount of data that will be in the inventory (see Section 3.8.4).

The most important consideration is that the data in the inventory be of high quality and be beneficial to the utility, so having less data is better than more data, if the data is of higher quality.