Case Study: Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA)
Building Climate Resilience Through Enterprise Asset Management at TRCA
Serving the Location of:
Toronto, ON
Serving a Population of:
~5,000,000
Modules:
Table of Contents
Overview
Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) manages nine watersheds and the Lake Ontario shoreline across a 3,467 km² area. Its work focuses on environmental protection, public safety, flood risk management, and stewardship of the natural and built assets that support long-term community resilience. TRCA’s asset base includes dams, flood control channels, erosion control structures, building and parks facilities, trails, and emerging green infrastructure.
Introduction
With a diverse and growing portfolio of critical infrastructure, TRCA needed more than a basic asset tracking system. As asset management practices matured, the organization required a modern, centralized platform to standardize data, streamline maintenance, and support evidence-based capital planning across multiple departments.
TRCA selected PSD Citywide for its integrated asset, maintenance, GIS, and decision support capabilities in a single environment. The platform went live in 2023 and has since improved operational coordination, risk visibility, and capital planning across the organization.
Challenges
Before PSD Citywide, TRCA's information was spread across disconnected systems and manual processes, making it difficult to assess asset condition, risk, and cost across the organization. Maintenance was largely reactive, reporting was manual, and leadership had limited visibility into performance and funding needs for critical infrastructure.
Key challenges included:
- Data standardization: Consolidating data from multiple sources into consistent templates and hierarchies
- Asset hierarchy and risk: Developing a framework suitable for diverse conservation infrastructure
- Change management: Transitioning from siloed processes to a centralized, multi-department system required extensive training and workflow alignment
- Non-built asset base complexity: Natural and enhanced assets require performance-based monitoring rather than purely physical-condition tracking
Solution
TRCA implemented PSD Citywide’s full Enterprise Asset Management suite, including Citywide Assets, Citywide Maintenance, Citywide GIS Viewer, Citywide Decision Support, and mobile Citywide Asset Collector tools.
Key components include:
Centralized asset registry:
A standardized hierarchy across flood and erosion control, facilities, machinery, vehicles, parks, conservation lands and other assets enables consistent condition and risk tracking across the organization
Integrated maintenance workflows:
Digital inspections, defect identification, and planned and reactive work orders linked to specific assets, with labour, materials, and equipment costs captured in the system
Mobile and GIS-enabled fieldwork:
Field staff view asset information, collect condition data, capture photos, and update records in real time
Risk-based capital planning:
A framework combining probability and consequence of failure to prioritize high-risk assets for capital planning and funding
Green infrastructure roadmap
A defined hierarchy for natural, enhanced, and engineered green infrastructure assets supports lifecycle and capital planning integration
Results
The TRCA’s operations are realizing the benefits of integrated, risk-based asset stewardship across the organization.
They now have:
Centralized, multi-department platform:
A single database now manages asset registry for buildings and facilities, trails, flood control, erosion control, and fleet
Proactive, asset-centric maintenance:
Standardized inspection-to-work-order workflows have improved cross-team coordination, reducing reliance on reactive responses
Risk-informed capital planning:
Automated dashboards prioritize funding based on combined probability and consequence of failure, giving leadership clearer visibility into high-risk public safety and environmental assets
“
Asset management is no longer about tracking assets — it’s about managing risk, enabling resiliency, and supporting sustainable communities.
“
Almolah Sakir
Advisor, Asset Management at Toronto and Region Conservation Authority
Conclusion
With a centralized, scalable platform connecting day-to-day operations to long-term capital planning, TRCA is well-positioned to make informed decisions across its environmental, financial, and climate resilience mandates — and to bring green infrastructure into the same enterprise framework as its built assets.
Climate change is redefining what it means to manage infrastructure.
With a centralized, scalable platform connecting day-to-day operations to long-term capital planning, TRCA is well-positioned to make informed decisions across its environmental, financial, and climate resilience mandates — and to bring green infrastructure into the same enterprise framework as its built assets.
