Craig Hannah, P.E., is the Engineering Manager for Johnson Controls’ Water Infrastructure Technology Team. He is Vice-Chair of the AWWA Metering Standards committee and a George Anderson Award recipient. He also serves on both the AWWA Water Loss Control Committee and Customer Metering Practices Committee, the latter of which he was a former Chair. Craig is a co-author of the AWWA M6, M22, and M36 Manuals. He earned a BS in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University and an MA from Texas Tech University. He has 21 years of experience in the water industry.

Most water utilities, especially those with hard water or those who may have periodic problems with debris and sand entering the system, know that water meters tend to lose their accuracy over time.  To reduce apparent water loss and to maintain billable usage and therefore billable water and sewer revenue, many utilities engage in some form of periodic meter testing.  If the sample meter population has lost its accuracy, it may be economically justifiable to replace the water meters.

In conjunction with conducting periodic meter accuracy testing, water utilities should also conduct a thorough audit of bot the large water meters and of the utility billing system to make certain that each end user is being billed correctly.  Some common sources of apparent water loss and lost billable revenue include but are not limited to the following:

• Accounts that are being billed for the wrong meter size
• Not following proper water meter installation practices
• Tampering and theft of service incidents
• Water meters in need of maintenance
• Existing metered services for which no account in the billing system was ever created
• Accounts that are located outside city limits that are being billed at inside city limit rates
• Accounts that are not being billed for all applicable services
• Accounts that have the wrong multiplier entered into the meter reading system, the utility billing system, or both.
• Errors in the meter reading process itself
• Accounts that are receiving estimated bills because of either maintenance or accessibility issues

Most of these types of errors can be identified and corrected with a relatively minor investment in time and material.  Even if no additional sources of billable revenue are found through the audit process, which is highly unlikely, the utility will now be sure in knowing that each end user is being billed correctly.

The purpose of this presentation will be to instruct water utilities in how to find and correct common errors in the meter reading process and in the utility billing system in order to decrease apparent water loss and to increase billable revenue.  The author will illustrate the presentation by providing actual case studies from their experiences in working with utilities of all sizes across the United States.