By Marjorie Prentice, Project Engineer and Sam Paquette, Senior Project Manager
When a new employee joins your team, they can feel a bit overwhelmed and unfamiliar with how the workplace operates – especially if no one has time to “show the ropes” to the new hire. It takes time to learn how things are done, and where to find certain information. The same can be true when a long-time employee leaves your workplace, and you wonder: “How will work processes function with this sudden loss of years of organizational knowledge?”
Have you found yourself in these situations? If so, keep reading to learn how your workplace can improve knowledge transfer and staff collaboration by creating organized and standardized procedures and collections of regularly maintained and updated reference data.
Develop an O&M Manual
For a municipality, creating an Operation and Maintenance (O&M) manual for each of your sanitary and stormwater management systems provides the opportunity to develop procedures for standard and emergency activities and organize disparate information in one collection of documents accessible to anyone who needs it.
The Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) implemented the Consolidated Linear Infrastructure Environmental Compliance Approval (CLI ECA) program which provides a single environmental permission that allows municipalities to make changes to their sanitary and stormwater systems when requirements in the CLI ECA are met. Under the program, all municipalities that own and operate sanitary collection and stormwater management systems are required to develop O&M manuals for these systems.
Under CLI ECA requirements, the O&M manual must include, or reference, items such as:
- Operation procedures
- Inspection programs
- Maintenance & repair programs
- O&M requirements to protect drinking water sources
- Emergency response, spill reporting, contingency plans
- Sampling, testing, monitoring procedures
- Procedures for handling public complaints
- As-built drawings
The manual may be a single document or a group of documents. A typical manual may be comprised of a collection of standard operating procedures, forms, schematics, maps, drawings, and other reference information. Ideally, each element should be catalogued within a numbered control system to ensure the information is organized, identifiable, and safely stored.
It is essential to have an overview section that provides a summary of all components of the system that are included in the CLI ECA, along with maps to illustrate their location. Yes, it will take some effort to develop procedures for the operation, inspection, and maintenance of each asset. Visual aids or schematics are helpful ways to illustrate complex system configurations or emergency procedures and a beneficial addition to any standard operating procedure. A picture (or diagram) really is worth a thousand words!
Establish Performance Indicators
Another key part of this process is establishing Operational Performance Indicators for each asset which can be tracked over time (e.g., percentage of system flushed and viewed with CCTV or number of maintenance holes inspected). These indicators provide an explicit record of work completed to improve operational performance and support funding requirements and requests. Other tracked measures over time – condition, flooding, overflows, or public complaints – can indicate potential issues or improvements in the systems.
Develop Customized Forms
Standardized inspection forms for each asset can be used in the field to collect required condition information. Often, it is more efficient to collect data using digital methods, but it is good practice to have a version of the digital form as part of the documented manual for reference or backup. Other customized forms created for actions such as facility maintenance, lateral investigations, property flooding, or spills ensure that all necessary information required for reporting has been documented in one place.
Part of the process of creating these forms is establishing how the collected information will be stored for future reference or analysis. Once these processes are in place, it should be simple to access and summarize all the necessary data for the systems’ Annual Performance Reports required by the MECP each spring.
Support Asset Management
A comprehensive O&M manual is also a key piece to support a municipality’s Asset Management Plan. An O&M manual helps ensure that infrastructure is properly operated and maintained to meet desired level of service parameters. One clear truth is that prioritized preventative maintenance and rehabilitation are proven to be more cost effective than reactive responses to emergency breakdowns and letting assets deteriorate until failure. In addition, as infrastructure systems are strained by the impacts of climate change, regular inspection and maintenance activities help assets perform to their design standards as intended.
Maturation with Time
One important caveat: an O&M manual is not intended to be a static collection of documents to meet MECP requirements. It should undergo regular updates as practices for managing the system evolve over time. The first version will likely not capture all activities but will set the framework for additions and revisions as staff are encouraged to contribute to the O&M manual development and capture organizational knowledge from which others can learn and benefit.
Join us for Further Discussion
Want to learn more? We will be diving further into creating an O&M manual for Stormwater Management Systems at the Source to Stream Conference in Brampton Ontario, March 31, 2026.
And remember – Operation and Maintenance Manuals aren’t just for Sanitary and Stormwater Management Systems. They can be implemented across a wide range of municipal assets. To learn more, contact Marjorie or Samantha.
