History
Effective Utility Management (EUM) first made its way onto the national scene in 2008 with the release of the original Effective Utility Management: A Primer for Water and Wastewater Utilities (“EUM Primer”). Since the EUM Primer’s 2008 release, EUM has grown to be one of the most widely used management frameworks for water and wastewater utilities across the United States. It is a regular topic at utility conference sessions, it is used as a framework for several national utility award programs, and it is used in the everyday operations and management at water utilities of all sizes around the country.
In 2017, the eleven EUM Collaborating Organizations released an updated version of the EUM Primer, revised to reflect the evolving technologies, challenges, and operating contexts faced by utility leaders today. The case examples included in this document demonstrate a range of strategies and techniques that today’s utility leaders are using to implement EUM in their everyday work.
Murfreesboro Water Resources was selected as one of five utilities adopting the concepts and tools of EUM. MWRD uses the Ten Attributes of an Effectively Managed Utility as a framework for setting future performance goals and management strategies. Every initiative, every action, every decision, and every dollar expended is now explicitly targeted at achieving one or more of these goals for the express benefit of the community.