The city is working to modernize the way it reads water meters, a change that would alter what water usage information it collects from residents and how it bills them.

Mike Lawless, deputy director of utilities, said his department is working to negotiate with a company that would assess the city’s current system and recommend how it could improve. The city currently employs a full-time staff to read meters. It is considering investing in advanced metering infrastructure, a system that would allow the utilities department to get data from the meters remotely through a wireless network.

“Right now, it’s all very manual; we have meter routes and a person who walks to each meter,” Lawless said. “One of the advantages of the (advanced meter infrastructure) system is we don’t have to do that.”

Approximately $100,000 was set aside for the assessment from the department’s 2015 operations and maintenance fund, Lawless said. He said an agreement with Baton Rouge, La.-based utilities consulting firm UtiliWorks is likely to go before the Lawrence City Commission in early January.

The assessment is estimated to start in January and last four months. Lawless said it would be years before a system would be in place, if the city decides to invest in one.

One addition the utility would like to make is an interface where customers can see data on their water usage, Lawless said. The advanced system would take multiple readings from each meter every day. One use of the additional data is identifying when and where there are leaks, he said.

“When we have a system taking multiple reads per day, that’s a lot of information and a lot of things we can do with that,” Lawless said. “If it shows usage overnight and no one is using water, or maybe even during the day when the household is empty, it could help customers identify water leaks. And that’s certainly not something you can tell by reading once a month.”

According to a city memorandum from November, the utilities department employs five full-time meter readers and five full-time field representatives who handle meter turn-ons, turn-offs and meter replacement. A supervisor oversees the team.

When college students move in and out of their residences from May to August, the city hires four more temporary meter readers to help change about a third of the city’s meters to new accounts.

Lawless said the full-time positions would be redistributed if an advanced system were installed.

“I think what they do changes,” he said. “It’s not necessarily that we don’t need them anymore; we just don’t need them walking a beat to read the meter. You still have to have people service meters, and people who understand the technology that we’re installing because — once it’s installed — you have to have somebody maintain it to keep it up. Some of that becomes a different use for the staff.”

The city will find out during the assessment how much the total project would cost, as well as whether it can use some of the infrastructure it already has. It will also learn how the utilities department and customers can use the extra data the system would collect.

Information from the assessment will help the city determine whether it wants to change to an automated meter infrastructure system or an older automated meter reading technology, in which meters could be read by driving past them through a device installed on city vehicles.

“I think the first step is to get the assessment done,” Lawless said. “This gives us a picture of what the benefits are of doing it, monetarily as well as some of the soft benefits — the customer ease of use.”