That’s the challenge Dave Brown, Director of Maintenance at Eastern Municipal Water District (EMWD), lays out clearly in a recent episode of The Drop, EMWD’s own award-winning podcast.
“Our pipelines are obviously in the ground. We can’t see them or touch them unless we dig them up. And there’s really no clean way to inspect them without having a major disruption.”
For years, EMWD, like many utilities, relied on reactive maintenance: responding when water appeared in the street or a customer called it in. But with aging infrastructure, increasing pressure on resources, and a mission to reduce water loss, they started looking for a new approach.
As Dave explains, “We were looking for a way to actually determine the condition of our pipeline without causing major disruption to the system.”
After exploring multiple vendors and approaches, EMWD ran a rigorous pilot to test VODA.ai’s predictive AI. They withheld an entire year’s worth of leak data and asked the system to predict where failures were most likely to occur. The results: VODA.ai successfully identified 73% of those breaks in the riskiest 20% of pipe segments.
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“They predicted breaks that occurred on a pipeline that had never had a break before. That really showed me that it was something that was useful.”
That success gave EMWD the confidence to move forward. “The pilot gave us the confidence to take that to executive management and take that to the board,” Dave says, “and know that we’re doing everything we can do to save our ratepayers money.”
But what stood out most in the conversation wasn’t just the numbers – it was the mindset shift. For EMWD, this isn’t about swapping tech for judgment. It’s about giving engineers and operators better tools to make smarter decisions.
“This is very much a tool that we can use,” Dave says. “It’s dependent upon our staff really knowing their stuff and giving it the most accurate data.”
From helping maintenance crews proactively target leaks across a large system…
To guiding engineers toward the right projects at the right time…
To enabling finance teams to prepare for future budget need…
Predictive AI is now part of how EMWD ensures reliable service, reduces risk, and plans ahead.
“It’s about proactive versus reactive. And proactive wins every time.”
🎧 Want to hear the full story, in Dave’s own words?
Listen to the full episode of The Drop here →
This article is part of our Utility Voices series—where we share real stories, field-tested insights, and the thinking behind smarter infrastructure planning. From early questions to proven outcomes, these are the voices shaping the future of water.
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