Sanitation Asset Maintenance for Facility Managers Training Course

Course overview

Facility managers responsible for toilets, septic systems, drainage, handwashing points, treatment units and water distribution assets must make maintenance decisions before a blocked line, overflowing pit, pump failure or contamination incident disrupts operations. Too often, asset information is incomplete, reactive work orders consume budgets, critical spares are unavailable, and contractors are assessed only after service failures. This course equips facility managers to establish a defensible, risk-based maintenance system for sanitation assets across offices, schools, health facilities, camps, industrial sites and public-service compounds.

Participants learn to build a sanitation asset register, define asset hierarchies and condition grades, identify failure modes, and set preventive-maintenance plans for pumps, pipes, septic tanks, soakaways, desludging equipment, water-storage tanks and hygiene facilities. The course covers maintenance criticality scoring, inspection routes, work-order design, lifecycle cost analysis, contractor service-level controls, spare-parts planning, water-quality and sanitation risk controls, and performance reporting. Participants practise translating field observations into priorities that can be justified to finance teams, senior management and service providers.

Teaching combines instructor-led technical sessions with maintenance-planning workshops, asset-data exercises, incident case studies and group reviews of realistic facility scenarios. Participants use Microsoft Excel-based asset registers and maintenance schedules, examine CMMS workflows using IBM Maximo examples, and map asset locations and service risks in QGIS. Each participant leaves with a draft sanitation asset maintenance plan for a selected facility, including an asset register structure, criticality matrix, preventive-maintenance schedule, inspection checklist, KPI dashboard and 90-day implementation actions.

The course is designed for experienced facility professionals who already oversee building services or WASH infrastructure and need stronger control of sanitation asset reliability, compliance and maintenance expenditure.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Construct a sanitation asset register with asset IDs, location data, condition grades, ownership and maintenance history
• Apply a risk-based criticality matrix to rank sanitation assets by service, health, environmental and operational consequences
• Develop preventive-maintenance task plans for pumps, septic tanks, drainage networks, water tanks and handwashing stations
• Conduct condition assessments using inspection checklists, defect coding and evidence-based condition scoring
• Design CMMS work-order workflows with fault codes, labour records, close-out criteria and escalation rules
• Calculate lifecycle maintenance costs and compare repair, rehabilitation and replacement options
• Specify contractor KPIs, service-level agreements and verification records for desludging and sanitation maintenance services
• Produce a 90-day sanitation asset improvement plan with budget priorities, KPIs and implementation responsibilities

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Facility Managers — who must maintain reliable sanitation services while controlling operational budgets
• WASH Facility Coordinators — who oversee water and sanitation infrastructure across compounds, institutions or programmes
• Estate and Building Services Managers — who manage plumbing, drainage, pumps and outsourced maintenance contracts
• Maintenance Supervisors — who assign technicians, inspect completed work and manage preventive-maintenance backlogs
• Operations Managers — who need to reduce service interruptions, health risks and emergency repair costs
• Infrastructure Project Managers — who must hand over maintainable sanitation assets with usable asset data

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical responsibility for facilities, building services, WASH infrastructure or maintenance operations, with familiarity with common sanitation assets such as pumps, tanks, pipework, toilets, drainage and septic systems. They should be able to read basic site drawings, interpret simple equipment data sheets and use Microsoft Excel for tables and calculations. Prior exposure to work orders, contractor management or planned maintenance is helpful. No engineering degree, advanced hydraulic modelling capability, prior CMMS administration experience or QGIS expertise is required; the course explains the asset-management methods and guided tools used.

Training methodology

The five days alternate focused instruction with applied facility-management work. Participants analyse sanitation asset failures, build register fields and criticality scores in Microsoft Excel, and turn inspection findings into maintenance work orders and task frequencies. Small groups assess a simulated facility with pumps, tanks, toilets, drainage and a septic system, then defend their budget priorities against operational and health-risk constraints. IBM Maximo workflow examples and QGIS mapping demonstrations show how asset data can be operationalised. The final workshop converts each participant’s selected workplace challenge into a 90-day implementation plan.

Course outline

Day 1: Sanitation asset systems and maintenance governance

• Sanitation service chains and facility asset boundaries
• Asset hierarchy design for water, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure
• Asset identification conventions and location coding
• Asset-register data fields and minimum data standards
• Roles, accountabilities and maintenance governance structures
• Failure consequences for health, service continuity and environment
• ISO 55000 asset-management principles applied to sanitation facilities

Workshop: Participants create an asset hierarchy and minimum-data asset-register template for a selected facility scenario.

Day 2: Condition assessment and risk-based prioritisation

• Condition-grade scales and observable defect criteria
• Inspection routes for toilets, tanks, pumps, pipework and drainage
• Failure mode and effects analysis for sanitation assets
• Asset criticality scoring using likelihood and consequence
• Health, environmental and operational risk categorisation
• Defect photography, inspection evidence and audit trails
• QGIS asset-location mapping and risk-layer basics

Workshop: Participants inspect a simulated asset portfolio, assign condition grades and produce a ranked criticality matrix.

Day 3: Preventive maintenance and work management

• Preventive, predictive, corrective and emergency maintenance strategies
• Task plans for pumps, tanks, septic systems and drainage networks
• Maintenance frequencies based on condition, use and failure history
• Work-order fields, fault codes and close-out standards
• IBM Maximo work-order workflow and backlog controls
• Spare-parts criticality and reorder-point planning
• Escalation procedures for overflows, blockages and contamination events

Workshop: Participants develop a 12-month preventive-maintenance schedule and work-order template for priority sanitation assets.

Day 4: Cost, contractors and compliance control

• Lifecycle cost components for repair, rehabilitation and replacement
• Repair-versus-replace decision models and cost assumptions
• Maintenance budget forecasting from asset condition and task plans
• Scope-of-work specifications for desludging and specialist repairs
• Service-level agreements, contractor KPIs and response-time measures
• Verification of completed sanitation maintenance work
• Compliance records for waste handling, cleaning and safe access

Workshop: Participants evaluate competing maintenance options and draft contractor KPIs and acceptance criteria for a desludging contract.

Day 5: Performance management and implementation planning

• Sanitation maintenance KPIs for availability, backlog, cost and repeat faults
• Dashboard design in Microsoft Excel
• Root-cause analysis for recurring blockages and pump failures
• Incident review and corrective-action tracking
• Maintenance-plan approval and stakeholder communication
• 90-day implementation sequencing and resource assignment
• Management reporting for capital renewal and risk decisions

Workshop: Participants present a sanitation asset maintenance plan with KPIs, budget priorities and a 90-day action roadmap for peer and instructor review.

Tools & standards covered

IBM Maximo, Microsoft Excel, QGIS, ISO 55000

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions