Ideally, it’s best for rehabilitation to sync with your preexisting schedule for maintenance and repair. Leaving critical infrastructure offline is not only expensive, but can deprive countless people a necessary service. Rehabilitation is cheaper and less time-intensive than outright replacement, making it a preferred choice whenever possible. If you see an opportunity to include rehabilitation into your next maintenance period, it’s likely worth the extra effort. 

At the end of the day, our options are always limited by what we can afford. If replacement is on the table, but rehabilitation could return old wastewater infrastructure to its heyday at a fraction of the cost, it’s best to choose rehabilitation and delay full replacement for as long as possible. However, it may not always suffice to go with the cheaper option; replacement may sometimes be necessary, so it’s important to first determine what old infrastructure needs before considering cost. 

While the future is always anyone’s guess, data-driven forecasting can help predict future requirements with relatively high accuracy. If your facility is expecting increased demand or may require new functionality, rehabilitation may not be enough. However, if current capabilities are expected to be sufficient for the time being, rehabilitation can repair and protect wastewater infrastructure without the need for a complete overhaul.