Municipal Water & Wastewater Infrastructure

Question: What aspect of coating selection, specification, or maintenance do you believe has the most room for improvement based on your experience?

Response: I'd say the biggest opportunity is moving away from lowest-initial-cost and prescriptive chemistry as the default decision drivers and toward lifecycle performance. I understand why low-bid wins-budgets and procurement requirements are real constraints-but an underperforming coating system that drives reactive maintenance can ultimately cost far more than selecting the right system upfront. Owners should evaluate the service environment, asset criticality, expected service life, maintainability, and consequences of failure. That then enables them to specify measurable performance around those needs rather than simply defaulting to a generic chemistry. The tools already exist: the AMPP Expected Service Life of Coatings and Cost Considerations for Practical Maintenance Work paper provides practical maintenance benchmarks, and AWWA's asset-management approach emphasizes balancing performance, risk, reliability, and lifecycle cost. The real opportunity is to use those tools consistently at the front end of the project rather than after a coating has already failed.