Introduction
For water utilities, meeting SLA commitments is essential—not only to comply with regulations, but also to ensure reliable service and maintain customer trust. Whether mandated by external regulators or defined through internal policies, SLAs drive accountability and timely resolution of maintenance issues.
However, IBM Maximo does not natively support automatic SLA tracking based on request type, classification, and priority. A practical solution is to implement a custom Priority Matrix that allows utilities to define response and completion targets for each scenario. This approach improves visibility, ensures consistency, and supports better decision-making across operations.
High-Level Work Execution Process
As with other Operations & Maintenance organisations, Work Orders (WO) are initiated from two main sources:
- Planned work, generated from Preventive Maintenance (PM)
- Unplanned work, initiated from Service Requests (SR) raised by internal teams or customers
Work orders can be classified into various types and classes, such as:
- Types: Reactive, Corrective, Preventive, Inspection, Calibration, etc.
- Classes: Water Treatment Plant, Pump Station, Water Quality, etc.
The most common customer-raised SRs that lead to WOs include:
- Reporting an issue (e.g. water leak or service disruption)
- Requesting a new connection or service disconnection
Depending on the request type, different information must be collected. For example:
- New connection: Connection type and size, number of properties in the development plan
- Water leak: Estimated leak volume, nature and location of the leak
- Water quality: Water colour, smell, taste, number of properties affected
These details determine the classification and priority of the request, which then influences the resulting work order.
Certain issues, such as service disruptions, water quality problems, or sewage overflows, impact public health and safety and are regulated with response/resolution timeframes. Other work types may be subject to internal SLA targets.
Tracking SLA compliance in Maximo
Out of the box, Maximo offers the necessary date fields to support SLA reporting, such as:
- SR Reported Date
- WO Target Start/Finish Dates
- WO Actual Start/Finish Dates
However, it lacks a built-in way to define target response and resolution times based on request details or work type/priority. To bridge this gap, we can build a custom Priority Matrix application that can be used to define response and resolution targets for each combination of Work Type and Priority.
At a high level, the following functionalities are required:
- After an SR is created and the details are collected, it is classified and set with an appropriate priority. For example:
- A water leak issue with the estimated volume of less than 1 bucket per hour is set with priority 3 – Medium.
- But if the estimated volume is at 1 cubic metre per hour, the SR is set with priority 2 – High.
- However, a water quality issue that affected only 1 property is prioritised at level 2 – High.
- But if 5 properties are affected, it is prioritised at level 1 – Urgent.
- For each type and priority of work, certain response and resolution targets can be defined. For example:
- An urgent water quality issue, the target response time is 15 minutes, and the target resolution time is 90 minutes.
- A standard new service installation with priority 3 can have a target response time of 14 days, and the target completion time is 45 days.
There are many ways to address this requirement. For example, the HSE (or Oil & Gas add-ons) provides a Prioritization Matrix application. However, this add-on is expensive, the application is complex, and its functions are geared toward the Energy sector. As such, when applied to a Water utility, some standard logic has to be disabled by customisation.
The common approach I have seen implemented by several companies is having a custom Priority Matrix application that contains a flat mapping of the target response and resolve time for each Work Type / Priority combination.
How it works:
- SR → WO flow
- A Service Request is created and classified (e.g. SR > Water > Break/Leak).
- Each class defines required parameters—e.g. number of affected properties, leak volume, etc.
- The classification sets a default Work Type.
- Based on the entered parameter values, a priority is assigned—either by CRM or via Maximo custom logic.
- When a Work Order is created, the Target Start/Finish Dates are automatically calculated using the Priority Matrix.
- SLA compliance is evaluated by comparing the actual dates with the target dates.
- PM → WO flow:
- The Work Type and Priority are predefined in the PM.
- Upon WO generation, Target Start/Finish Dates are populated from the Priority Matrix.
- Classification is optional and generally not required for planned work.
Monitoring and Reporting SLA Compliance
Once date fields are automatically populated, utilities can set up tracking mechanisms such as:
- Automated Reports: provide regular updates on WO completion and SLA compliance
- Start Center Result Sets: highlight near-due or overdue WOs
- Escalations: trigger email/SMS alerts for urgent work
