By Rebecca Harris (Senior Consultant, Brightly), Rex Chen (Senior Consultant, Brightly) and Eyoel Tegegn (Product Manager, Siemens).
Water infrastructure is one of the most challenging asset networks to manage – especially when much of it lies hidden beneath the surface. In New Zealand, decades of underinvestment, combined with ageing pipes nearing end-of-life, have left many councils grappling with increasingly frequent pipe bursts, pressure drops, and rising contamination risks.
Leaky pipes aren’t just an engineering problem for New Zealand councils – they’re a public health risk and waste considerable public funds. An estimated 133 million cubic metres of water worth around $122 million is lost annually – roughly 22% of New Zealand’s total supply and enough to meet the consumption needs of about a third of the population.
Beyond the financial costs, non-revenue water also poses serious sustainability concerns. With climate change and growing populations, water security is under strain, leading to water restrictions in summer and increased pressure on limited resources.
And that’s not all. Contamination is another growing concern, made worse by New Zealand’s high livestock-to-human ratio. During periods of heavy rain and flooding, animal waste can enter water sources, forcing councils to issue boil water notes and undermining public trust in the system.
While the current water network is valued between $40 and $50 billion, the investment needed over the next 30 years to upgrade and maintain the country’s drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater systems is estimated at a staggering $120–185 billion.
With so many pipes nearing end-of-life at the same time, councils are staring down a massive wave of renewals. For many of New Zealand’s 67 councils, especially smaller and rural ones with limited ratepayer bases and competing priorities, the scale of the challenge is overwhelming.
Finding a smarter way forward
With limited budgets and no way to replace everything at once, how can New Zealand councils take back control of their water infrastructure?
There is a way: with data. Using the right tools and approach, councils can find out where to begin, what to prioritise, and how to extract the most value from every dollar spent.
Rather than replacing pipes based solely on age or condition – which can be hard to determine for underground assets – councils can better harness data to understand the consequences of failure, guiding investment where it will have the greatest impact.
Building the foundations to modernise water asset management
According to Water NZ’s 2021 National Performance Review, around 30% of water authorities lack a comprehensive digital asset management system. Many still rely on outdated methods or information scattered across different systems, limiting visibility and insight.
Rising regulatory expectations under the Local Water Done Well program, combined with the complexity of managing aging assets, is driving demand for modern Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) systems.
EAM consolidates asset data in one place, giving councils real-time visibility into performance, criticality, and cost. When integrated with smart sensors and IoT devices, they enable early detection of issues such as leaks, triggering maintenance before problems escalate.
Meanwhile, advances in AI are changing the economics of leakage detection. AI-driven platforms can now identify leaks down to 0.25 litres per second within a 200-metre radius. They can also detect pressure drops, sensor faults and asset failures.
Embracing risk-based planning
By better understanding downstream impacts, councils can move beyond a one- size-fits-all approach and reactive planning – identifying critical assets and modelling the likely outcomes of different investment scenarios.
There are always more potential impacts than meets the eye – and many are not immediately obvious across the asset lifecycle. These include risks around contamination, leaked water, environmental resilience, reduced pressure impacting firefighting capacity, and even reputational damage affecting tourism and public trust.
It’s also important to remember that not all assets carry equal risk. The same pipe in the same condition might have very different consequences depending on its location and purpose. For example, a burst pipe near a hospital or school carries far more risk than one in a low-population area.
Finding the sweet spot of spending
Maximising the value of infrastructure over its lifecycle means finding the “sweet spot” between risk, performance and cost – where service levels are maintained without overinvesting.
Strategic Asset Management (SAM) enables councils to explore a range of “what-if” scenarios. What happens if funding is reduced? If a major failure occurs elsewhere? If climate risks intensify? By simulating degradation and renewal options over time, councils can test trade-offs and build resilient, adaptable plans.
This begins by aligning all assets to a common baseline – either through real-world data or simulated age-based estimates – creating a consistent starting point to forecast future performance and needs.
Planning for the future
To meet the challenge ahead, councils must move beyond traditional age- and condition-based renewal planning. A shift to risk-informed, data-driven decision making with SAM will help prioritise investment based on cost, sustainability, service delivery and community outcome. With the right systems and insights, councils can chart a smarter, more resilient future for New Zealand’s water.
To learn more, read our guide Empowering NZ Councils to Deliver Safe, Reliable and Sustainable Water Services.
