Pacific island utility to implement asset management software

The Commonwealth Utilities Corporation (CUC) in the U.S. territory of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) recently entered into an asset management contract with MentorAPM.

The contract is for 10 years and MentorAPM, a provider of end-to-end enterprise asset management software based in Phoenix, Arizona, will provide a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) and asset management software for the CUC. MentorAPM was the successful bidder to an RFP seeking asset management software that would support CUC’s mission of delivering water treatment services to the three main islands of the CNMI – Saipan, Tinian and Rota – and wastewater treatment services to Saipan.

In April 2021, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 9 began providing technical assistance to the CUC in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands for developing a fiscal sustainability plan as well as further developing and implementing an asset management program, supported by PG Environmental. MentorAPM said its platform will help CUC better manage its water and wastewater assets on a day-to-day basis and support fiscal sustainability.

According to MentorAPM, CUC prioritized finding a CMMS that would be simple and easy to use; that would deliver efficiencies in data capture; and deliver an intuitive setup that would help CUC transition from a historically paper‐based utility, with a lot of information residing in institutional knowledge, to a more automated environment that would improve CUC’s ability to protect its assets and get more life out of them.

“Utilities like CUC and our clients in Far North Queensland often struggle to find skilled workers. Remote tropical communities also have a special vulnerability to extreme weather events,” said Tacoma Zach, co-founder and CEO of MentorAPM. “In delivering asset management technology to Saipan, Tinian and Rota, our goals are to enhance disaster preparedness, strengthen utility asset management, and to shore up their skilled bench strength so that CUC can get the most from the assets they have and improve both reliability and resilience.”

PG Environmental under the EPA will work with CUC and MentorAPM on implementation of the software program, which is scheduled for completion in calendar year 2025.