Page 277 - Water Loss Control

246 Cha pte r F o u r tee n

workings of the customer billing system: flowcharting is the recommended approach.
Figure 11.7 in Chap. 11 gives an example of the development of a revenue protection
program to assess and address apparent losses. As shown in this figure, billing system
flowcharting is the first and foremost undertaking in launching such a program.
While such an effort involves some expense and time, these investments are typically
minimal and hold the potential to quickly identify feasibly recoverable apparent
losses that can immediately increase revenues, thereby providing a fast payback and
successful start to the program.
As suspect customer accounts become identified by revenue protection analysts,
individual inspections of customer properties will be needed to confirm water using
status in nonbilled accounts, evidence of meter tampering or illegal connections and
other occurrences that result in underregistered water and missing revenue. Depending
upon the extent of the apparent loss problem in the utility, the utility manager may
determine to dedicate full-time staff to the investigative function. This may be accom-
plished by assigning dedicated personnel to this role, or by cross-training meter read-
ing or other personnel who routinely visit customer properties.
Apparent loss control via revenue protection programs is often a very cost-effective
undertaking, particularly in the early phases of the water loss control program. Fre-
quently an almost-immediate impact is realized through increased revenue recovery.
Establishing the revenue protection program as outlined in Fig. 11.7 is therefore one of
the initial first steps in the bottom-up phase of the water loss control program.