Construction quality assurance

Summary form only given. Poor distribution reliability is often caused by failure to build the system to standards and/or failure to establish reliable standards. The reliability and asset management group is constantly chasing one or both of these failures. Many utility reliability programs make the system reliable later, and at a higher cost. In many respects, utility reliability programs, although necessary, are reactive in nature. This paper proposes a proactive approach to reliability...construction quality assurance. Utilities should embed reliability into the system when the costs are incremental during existing day to day work. Otherwise, failure to build the system to standards will eventually lead to the creation of future reactive reliability programs.