Why a Waterworks Excellence report card?

Water utilities are the everyday miracles of the modern world—essential for health and prosperity, but taken for granted. Waterworks Excellence report cards offer a comprehensive and accessible way to demonstrate a utility’s performance and value, strengthening public trust and accountability.

Rigorous standards and empirical evidence of excellence are the central principles behind Waterworks Excellence grading. Manny Teodoro's grading standards distinguish failing utilities from passable utilities, and good utilities from truly great ones.

SAMPLE REPORT CARD

The Challenge

Although drinking water is essential, most citizens know little about the systems and organizations that provide it. A central challenge for governing and managing drinking water is that water service prices are much more visible than water service quality. Utility managers understand the chemical, environmental, capital, and financial properties of water service, but the general public does not.

By contrast, the price of water service is immediately and perfectly observable: when bills arrive, utility customers learn exactly what that water service costs. Since citizens only vaguely observe their water utilities’ quality, they cannot properly evaluate the tradeoff between water’s quality and its price. Operating natural monopolies and facing political pressure to keep prices low, managers and policymakers have little means of demonstrating the value and performance of their water systems.

So how can we distinguish a great water utility from one that merely avoids disasters and meets minimum regulatory requirements?

The Solution

Waterworks Excellence report cards seek to recognize strong performance, facilitate accountability, and provide feedback to policymakers and to the public. Just as in a school, WE report cards include grades for multiple subjects—Health, Aesthetics, Infrastructure & Operations, Finance, Communications, and Source Water—with each grade based on multiple performance indicators.

WE grades are based on observable outcomes, not on policies or procedures. Manny Teodoro consulted with experts in each graded area in crafting grading standards. Expert panelists include retired utility managers, consultants, scientists, and university professors. Their disciplinary backgrounds include engineering, chemistry, economics, finance, communications, and public management.

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Here's how we work with you

Upload Data
Calculate Grades
Office Hours
Publish Report Card
Visualize Excellence

Authorized utility staff log in to our secure Waterworks Excellence portal and follow guided instructions to upload the necessary data. This step gathers essential details in six key areas—Utility Information, Financial Inputs, Water Quality, Infrastructure, Operations, and Resource Inputs. Each data point helps ensure an accurate, fair, and comprehensive evaluation of your utility’s performance.

Here's how we work with you

Upload Data

Calculate Grades

Once your data is uploaded, the Waterworks Excellence team—led by Dr. Manny Teodoro—applies our established grading rubric to assess your utility’s performance across multiple dimensions. Each grade reflects the rigorous standards and multiple performance metrics. The result is a clear, evidence-based picture of where your utility excels - and where you might need to invest.

Office Hours

After your report card is generated, you’ll meet directly with Dr. Teodoro during dedicated Office Hours. This personalized consultation offers the opportunity to review results in detail, ask questions, and discuss messaging and next steps. Together, we’ll begin developing a roadmap for improving your grades and achieving greater excellence.

Publish Report Card

With your input and approval, we’ll coordinate the rollout of your utility’s official Report Card. Published on our website, your report card provides transparency and accountability—empowering staff, leadership, elected officials, and citizen-consumers to understand your performance at a glance.

Visualize Excellence

Our interactive dashboard allows utility leaders to explore “what-if” scenarios—seeing how strategic changes in operations, finance, or infrastructure can improve future grades. By visualizing outcomes, your team can make smarter, data-driven decisions and plan for a more resilient, equitable, and high-performing water system.

testimonials

Check what other utility leaders are saying

“We rely on water systems for our health and quality of life, but they’re easy to take for granted. Report cards can change the way that utility leaders, policymakers, and the public think about these critical systems and put us on a path to safer, more resilient service for everyone, everywhere. It’s a game-changer.”

Kathryn Sorensen

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY & PHOENIX WATER (FORMER DIRECTOR)

"The report cards help utilities identify voids in service where we can improve… more importantly, information is accessible to the public."

Marcus Pearson

Madison water utility

“Our grades are pretty good… water quality [and] the guys are doing a great job maintaining the system and keeping costs down....We’ve tried to keep the rates down for the ratepayers, so a 'C' [in Finance] is good because if I were at an 'A', your rates would be higher.”

Warren Howard

marinette water & wastewater