Submission to Autodesk: Enabling Rising Main Import & Watermain‑Style Risk Modelling in Info360 Asset

Purpose of Submission

To request that Autodesk Info360 Asset:

1. Allows the importation of rising mains as a dedicated asset class, and

2. Provides a pressure‑main risk model equivalent to the current watermain configuration, including the flexibility to apply non‑WSA risk criteria.

Why This Change Is Strategically Necessary

1. Rising mains are pressure assets — forcing them into gravity-sewer logic is technically wrong

Rising mains behave nothing like gravity sewer pipes.
The current platform assumption—treating all sewer assets as if they follow WSA gravity-sewer condition models—breaks the risk logic from the start.

Rising mains:

• operate under pressure,

• have hydraulic failure modes,

• experience breaks, bursts, transients,

• are monitored and maintained like watermains,

• and are not routinely CCTV‑inspected (because CCTV doesn’t work under live pressure conditions).

Trying to model them under WSA sewer criteria is fundamentally misaligned with how utilities actually manage them.

Strategic truth:
If Autodesk continues forcing rising mains into sewer-style condition models, your platform will keep generating inaccurate risk outputs for one of the highest‑consequence asset groups in any wastewater network.

2. Rising mains carry high environmental and customer impact — inaccurate risk modelling exposes utilities to real-world risk

A rising main failure is not a minor event.
It can result in:

• major spills,

• environmental harm,

• regulatory prosecution,

• customer outages,

• and significant rebuild costs.

They are often single point‑of‑failure assets, unlike gravity sewers that generally have redundancy in the system.

If the platform can’t model:

• burst likelihood,

• transient exposure,

• pump duty conditions,

• historical breaks,

• operational pressure,
  then it cannot produce a realistic risk score.

This isn’t an abstract modelling issue; it affects capital planning, renewals decisions, and incident prevention.

Strategic truth:
Misclassifying rising mains isn’t just a data inconvenience — it undermines the utility’s ability to defend its risk management decisions.

3. The WSA sewer criteria are irrelevant for pressure assets

WSA gravity-sewer criteria rely heavily on:

• CCTV condition grades,

• structural defect scoring,

• service defect scoring.

Rising mains:

• cannot be CCTV’d in normal operation,

• do not present structural defects in the same observable way,

• fail through mechanisms not covered in any WSA gravity criteria.

Utilities with large wastewater networks already use:

• burst history,

• surge risk,

• pipe material degradation curves,

• operational pressure,

• corrosion environment,

• hydraulic loading,
  to assess likelihood of failure.

WSA does not address any of this.

Strategic truth:
Autodesk is unintentionally restricting utilities to an irrelevant standard that does not reflect modern pressure-asset management practice.

4. Utilities already treat rising mains like watermains — the platform should reflect actual practice

Across Australia, rising mains are managed operationally much closer to watermains than to gravity sewers.
Utilities routinely:

• track breaks,

• manage surge risk,

• maintain them as high‑criticality pipelines,

• rehabilitate based on pressure‑main science, not sewer CCTV defect logic.

Watermain risk models in Info360 Asset already include:

• break likelihood,

• age-based risk,

• pressure and hydraulic factors,

• material failure curves.

Rising mains need the same treatment.

Strategic truth:
Autodesk already has the correct model — you’re just not letting utilities apply it to rising mains.

5. Forcing workarounds wastes time, creates inconsistency, and undermines platform credibility

Today, utilities are forced to:

• fake rising mains as watermains,

• or incorrectly label them as sewer pipes and ignore defect inputs,

• or run external pressure-main models and manually import risk scores.

All three options:

• reduce trust in the platform,

• undermine auditability,

• and create duplicative effort.

Strategic truth:
When software forces users into workarounds, it's a sign the data model needs to evolve — not the users.

Requested Enhancements

1. Add Rising Mains as a native asset class

Including:

• asset type "Sewer Rising Main" or "Wastewater Pressure Main",

• standard attributes: operating pressure, pump station source, duty/standby, burst history, surge environment, etc.

2. Enable watermain-style risk modelling

Apply or adapt the existing watermain risk engine to rising mains:

• breaks per year,

• pipe material failure curves,

• pressure/hydraulic factors,

• age and environment multipliers,

• customisable consequence-of-failure criteria.

3. Allow fully custom criteria, not restricted to WSA

Utilities must be able to define:

• likelihood-of-failure factors,

• consequence-of-failure factors,

• material-specific degradation parameters,

• environmental multipliers.

No constraints tied to WSA CCTV-based logic.

Conclusion

Rising mains are critical wastewater pressure assets, and their failure mechanisms have nothing in common with WSA gravity-sewer defect modelling.

By enabling:

• rising main import, and

• a genuine pressure-main risk model,

Autodesk will allow utilities to:

• model risk accurately,

• prioritise renewals based on real science,

• and reduce environmental and operational exposure.

This is not just a feature request — it is correcting a structural gap that currently forces utilities into inaccurate, non-defensible modelling.