Michigan utility expands asset management partnership following successful pilot
The Genesee County Drain Commissioner Division of Water & Waste Services (GCDC-WWS) in Michigan has expanded its partnership with MentorAPM following a successful pilot of its MentorLens platform, adopting additional tools aimed at improving asset management and capital planning.
The utility has contracted for three solutions—MentorLens, Risk & Criticality Analyzer and Asset Investment Planner—to support a more data-driven approach to infrastructure management. MentorLens enables field crews to capture asset condition data using photos, which are then analyzed with AI to generate condition scores and extract key attributes, reducing data collection time and cost compared to traditional methods.
“After nearly 40 years in water utility leadership, I believe resilience comes from innovation and data-driven decisions,” said Terry Biederman, assistant director of water at GCDC-WWS, in a press release. “MentorLens solved two critical problems immediately — collecting asset information with limited resources and eliminating manual data entry errors. Our mission is to operate state-of-the-art facilities that protect public health, and MentorAPM gives us the data foundation to do exactly that.”
GCDC-WWS serves approximately 155,000 residents across 21 communities, operating one of the largest water utilities in Michigan. Historically, condition assessments have been time-intensive and quickly outdated, but the new system enables continuous data collection and integration with the utility’s existing work order platform, creating a real-time feedback loop between field conditions and operations.
By combining updated condition data with operational history, the utility can use MentorAPM’s risk modeling tools to better prioritize assets and inform capital improvement planning. The integrated platform is designed to help utilities shift from reactive maintenance to proactive, risk-based decision-making.
“GCDC-WWS views GIS as the geo-spatial center of the universe and builds integrated applications around it that let us leverage that investment as a real day-to-day tool,” Biederman said in a press release. “The criticality and capital planning side of MentorAPM is going to help us take condition assessment data, combine it with what we’re seeing from SCADA and other existing platforms, and get better probability-of-failure and consequence-of-failure calculations. This will provide the foundation for more accurate capital improvement plan development and implementation. I haven’t found another application suite out there that holds this kind of promise.”