What AWWA's 2026 Survey Actually Says About After-Hours Work
AWWA's 2026 State of the Water Industry report added an overtime module. The finding that matters is not hours worked. It is that 32.7% of the utility respondents to that question report no formal overtime policies or procedures.
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The American Water Works Association added an overtime module to its 2026 State of the Water Industry report, and the sharpest number in it is not about hours worked. It is that 32.7% of the utility respondents to that question report no formal overtime policies or procedures at all, and only 13.0% report comprehensive overtime management policies. The report was announced on 30 April 2026, from a survey of 2,171 water professionals fielded between 21 September and 31 October 2025.
Key takeaways
- The findings are AWWA’s own, and part of the module is free. The free executive summary carries the impact-of-overtime table, the strategies chart in whole percentages, and a short narrative. The overtime policy exhibit, the per-exhibit bases and every decimal quoted below sit in the full report, which AWWA supplies on request. Nothing here is unreported. What follows is about reading it correctly, and every figure is labelled with which of the two documents it came from.
- Table 18 is a frequency scale, not a cost split. It asks how often a given reason leads to overtime, on a never, rarely, sometimes, often, always scale. It does not report a share of overtime hours or a share of overtime spend, and it cannot be converted into one.
- The governance gap is the finding. Figure 16 (n=770): 46.5% have basic overtime approval procedures, 32.7% have no formal policies or procedures, and 13.0% have comprehensive overtime management policies.
- Technology ranks sixth of nine responses. Figure 17 (n=759) puts investing in automation or technology at 7.9%, behind on-call rotations (19.1%), improving preventative maintenance (16.8%), cross-training (16.4%), optimizing work schedules (15.3%) and hiring additional staff (12.2%). The free summary prints the same nine answers rounded to whole percentages, so this ranking is checkable without the full report.
- Safety incidents are the impact area least affected, not most. In the executive summary’s own banding, 75% of respondents report no to slight impact on safety incidents, the highest of the five areas measured by a wide margin. That cuts against the intuitive fatigue argument.
- The report’s headline framing and its own ranking table point in different directions, and both belong in a citation. Respondents rank workforce issues ninth of the top ten sector issues, down from seventh in 2025. The same summary warns that high overtime, limited succession planning and growing retirements risk eroding institutional knowledge. A piece that quotes only one of those is quoting half the source.
What did AWWA add to the survey in 2026?
The State of the Water Industry survey has run annually since 2004. The executive summary says the latest iteration added new questions on the impacts of US tariffs, and separately that it now includes questions on overtime and its impact on operations, budgets and employee retention. The overtime module is the new material this article is about.
The free executive summary carries two of the results: the banded impact-of-overtime table and the strategies chart, both on page 11, in whole percentages. The four exhibits cited here, with their own bases, sit in the full report: Table 18 on reasons for overtime (n=769), Figure 16 on overtime policies or procedures (n=770), Table 19 on the impact of overtime (n=764) and Figure 17 on overtime strategies (n=759). AWWA supplies the full report through a request form on its State of the Water Industry page, which reads “Request your 2026 State of the Water Industry Report by filling out the form.”
Those bases deserve a sentence of their own, because the obvious reading of them is wrong. They are not a third of the sample choosing to answer. The full report’s methodology note records that respondents either skipped questions or were not shown them, so a base of 769 describes a screened subgroup, not a response rate. The subgroup is utility respondents: the full report counts 1,273 of them out of 2,171 participants, and roughly 60% of that group appears in each overtime exhibit.
One labelling inconsistency is worth knowing before you quote anything, and you can see it in the free document without asking AWWA for a thing. On page 2 the executive summary reports that emergency repairs and system failures often or always lead to overtime “according to 54% of utility executives.” On page 11 it reports the same 54%, alongside the on-call figure, as what “Respondents say.” Executives and respondents are not the same population, and the free summary attributes one number to both. Cite the exhibit and its base rather than the narrative sentence, write “utility respondents to that question,” and leave the characterisation alone.
What does Table 18 actually measure?
Table 18 asks how often each of several situations leads to overtime. The response options are a frequency scale. A respondent selecting “always” for on-call response is saying that on-call work always generates overtime at their utility. They are not saying how many hours it generates, what it costs, or how it compares to any other line in the table.
| Reason | Often | Always | Often plus always |
|---|---|---|---|
| On-call response requirements | 29.5% | 30.4% | 59.9% |
| Emergency repairs and system failures | 32.1% | 22.1% | 54.2% |
| Staffing shortages | 18.1% | 11.4% | 29.5% |
| Coverage for vacation or sick leave | 17.9% | 9.7% | 27.6% |
| Regular maintenance requiring off-hours work | 14.9% | 6.1% | 21.0% |
| Seasonal demand fluctuations | 12.4% | 5.4% | 17.8% |
| Planned capital or maintenance work | 11.8% | 5.2% | 17.0% |
| Regulatory compliance requirements | 8.4% | 6.0% | 14.4% |
Base: 769 utility respondents. Source: AWWA 2026 State of the Water Industry full report, Table 18.
AWWA’s own prose shows why the distinction needs stating. The executive summary says on page 11 that “the dominant driver of overtime is reactive, unplanned work,” and gives on-call response at 56% and emergency repairs at 54% often or always. That is a fair summary of a frequency table: those are the two most frequently cited reasons. It is not a statement about hours or money, and the table cannot be turned into one. A reason that always triggers a two-hour callout ranks above a reason that sometimes triggers a fourteen-hour storm response, because the scale counts occasions and not hours. Any utility that wants a cost decomposition has to build it from its own payroll and work order records. This survey does not provide one, and a vendor who hands you one built from Table 18 has not read Table 18.
The on-call row needs a caveat before anyone quotes it. The free executive summary gives 56%. Table 18 in the full report gives 29.5% often and 30.4% always, which sums to 59.9%. The emergency repairs row reconciles between the two documents (54% against 54.2%), so the on-call gap is not simply rounding, and the population labelling described above is the most likely reason for it. Until AWWA reconciles the two, cite one figure, name the document and exhibit it came from, and do not present 56% and 59.9% as though they were the same measurement.
Where is the actual gap?
Figure 16 is the exhibit the rest of the module should be read against. It asks what overtime policies or procedures the utility has.
| Overtime policy posture | Share of respondents |
|---|---|
| Basic approval procedures | 46.5% |
| No formal policies or procedures | 32.7% |
| Comprehensive overtime management policies | 13.0% |
| Don’t know or no opinion | 5% |
| Currently developing policies | 3% |
Base: 770 utility respondents. Source: AWWA 2026 State of the Water Industry full report, Figure 16. The report states the first three to one decimal place in its narrative; the last two are read off the chart, which is labelled in whole percentages.
Read that against Table 18. Six in ten of these respondents say on-call work often or always produces overtime, and about a third of them have no written policy governing it. Just under half have approval procedures, which is a control on authorisation rather than a system for understanding where the hours go.
This is a governance finding, not a staffing finding. A recurring, predictable, budget-visible category of spending is being managed at most of these utilities by asking a supervisor to sign a timesheet. Nothing in the survey says those utilities are spending too much on overtime. It says most of them are not in a position to know. With no formal policy, a utility cannot answer basic questions from its own records: which assets generate the callouts, whether callout volume is rising, whether an asset’s overtime exceeds the cost of the repair that would end it.
That question is answerable with a CMMS, a payroll export and a few afternoons. It does not require buying anything. It requires somebody to be assigned to it.
Overtime governance, as reported to AWWA in 2026
Scroll sideways to see the whole drawing.
Figure 1. Overtime governance, as reported to AWWA in 2026. A single horizontal bar divided into proportional segments showing how utility respondents described their overtime policies and procedures. Basic approval procedures account for 46.5 per cent. No formal policies or procedures account for 32.7 per cent, and this segment is emphasised. Comprehensive overtime management designed to monitor, manage and reduce cost accounts for 13.0 per cent. Do not know or no opinion accounts for 5 per cent, and developing policies accounts for 3 per cent. The base is 770 respondents to that question in the 2026 State of the Water Industry survey.
What are utilities choosing to do about it?
Figure 17 asks what strategies utilities have implemented or considered to manage and reduce overtime hours.
| Strategy | Share of respondents |
|---|---|
| Implementing on-call rotations | 19.1% |
| Improving preventative maintenance to reduce emergencies | 16.8% |
| Cross-training employees | 16.4% |
| Optimizing work schedules | 15.3% |
| Hiring additional staff | 12.2% |
| Investing in automation or technology | 7.9% |
| Developing a formal emergency overtime policy | 6.0% |
| No specific strategies implemented or considered | 5.6% |
| Other | 0.6% |
Base: 759 utility respondents. Source: AWWA 2026 State of the Water Industry full report, Figure 17. The nine responses sum to 99.9%, which is consistent with one selection per respondent rather than a multiple-choice tally. The executive summary prints the same nine answers on page 11 as 19%, 17%, 16%, 15%, 12%, 8%, 6%, 6% and 1%, and each of those is the decimal above rounded, so the ordering can be checked against the free document.
Investing in automation or technology sits at 7.9%, sixth of nine. Five answers rank above it. Three rank below: developing a formal emergency overtime policy at 6.0%, no specific strategies at 5.6%, and other at 0.6%. The water sector, asked directly what it has implemented or considered about overtime, mostly does not name technology.
Take the number for what it measures and no more. It does not settle whether technology would help. It records what utilities are currently reaching for, which is worth knowing before anyone builds an argument on top of it.
The four leading answers share a shape. On-call rotations, cross-training and schedule optimisation redistribute the same work across more people more predictably. Improving preventative maintenance is the only one of the four that tries to reduce the volume of unplanned work rather than spread it. All four are organisational rather than procurement decisions.
Does the survey support a fatigue and safety argument?
No, and this is where a piece written from the headline would go wrong. Table 19 asks about the impact of overtime across five areas. The executive summary presents the banded version on page 11.
| Impact area | Don’t know or no opinion | No to slight impact | Moderate | High to considerable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Employee morale and work-life balance | 4% | 40% | 30% | 26% |
| Budget management | 5% | 47% | 25% | 23% |
| Staff retention | 4% | 54% | 21% | 20% |
| Operational efficiency | 3% | 49% | 30% | 18% |
| Safety incidents | 6% | 75% | 11% | 8% |
Base: 764 utility respondents. Source: AWWA 2026 State of the Water Industry, Table 19, as banded in the executive summary, page 11.
Safety incidents are the least affected area in the table by a wide margin: 75% report no to slight impact, against 40% to 54% for the other four. In the full report’s finer breakdown, 48.2% report no impact at all on safety incidents.
That is not the answer most people expect. It is the answer the source gives. Anyone who wants to argue that after-hours water work carries a fatigue risk needs a different evidence base, because citing AWWA 2026 for that argument means citing a source that reports the opposite.
The narrative around the table is worth reading against the table itself. The executive summary states that overtime has “a moderate-to-considerable impact on employee morale (56%), budget management (48%), and operational efficiency (48%).” Each of those three figures is the moderate band and the high-to-considerable band added together, and safety incidents, where the same sum is 19%, is not among the three named. Both the sentence and the table are accurate. They select different bands, and a citation should say which one it is using.
The full report’s unbanded table adds a further wrinkle on morale. The single most common answer there is moderate impact at 29.6%, just ahead of slight impact at 27.7%, so the executive summary’s 40% “no to slight” band understates how central the middle of the scale is. Budget management shows 47% reporting no to slight impact, which sits oddly beside Figure 16. The likely explanation is the one Figure 16 already gives: a third of these utilities have no formal mechanism for observing what overtime costs them, so a report of low budget impact is partly a report about visibility.
How does this sit against the rest of the report?
Two ways, and they do not agree.
In the 2026 ranking of the top ten issues facing the water sector, infrastructure renewal and replacement is first and financing for capital improvements is second. Workforce issues rank ninth, down from seventh in 2025. The executive summary adds that an aging workforce is “now #9, down from #3 in 2023,” and that a majority report their utility’s workforce training programme is fully funded (68%) or expected to be within three years (12%).
AWWA’s narrative reads the same survey with more urgency than the ranking does. The section carrying these workforce results closes by warning that “high overtime, limited succession planning, and growing retirements risk eroding institutional knowledge and decreasing reliability.” Both the ranking and the warning are in the same free document, on pages 3 and 11. The ranking is what respondents said when asked to prioritise sector issues against each other; the warning is the publisher’s reading of the workforce answers taken together. Quote whichever you can defend, and say which one it is.
What the overtime module adds is narrower than either framing and better supported than both: the after-hours work that aging assets generate is, at about a third of these utilities, ungoverned by any written policy.
The wider labour picture is neither dramatic nor comfortable. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in its 27 August 2026 update, puts employment of water and wastewater treatment plant and system operators at 131,000 jobs in 2025 and projects a 6% decline over 2025 to 2035, a change of about 7,500 fewer positions, with roughly 10,000 openings projected each year on average over the decade and 2025 median pay of $60,020 per year. A shrinking occupation with steady replacement demand reads more like a succession problem than a shortage.
What a utility can do with these four exhibits
Nothing here requires a purchase, and the sequence below is the same sequence Figure 16 implies.
- Establish the base. Pull twelve months of overtime hours from payroll and join them to work orders. The join is usually the hard part and it is usually possible.
- Attribute by asset, not by crew. Table 18’s categories are reasons. Your own records can give you assets, and a ranked list of the ten assets generating the most callout hours is the document that supports a decision.
- Separate scheduled standby from actual callouts. On-call rotations are the most-chosen strategy in Figure 17, and their cost behaves differently from the cost of the work they respond to.
- Test the preventative maintenance claim against your own data. It is the second-most-chosen strategy at 16.8%. Whether it reduces your callouts is an empirical question about your assets, answerable once step 2 exists.
- Write down what you find before deciding what to change. A utility that reaches a measured baseline has already moved past the 79.2% of Figure 16 respondents who report either no formal policies or only basic approval procedures.
Sources
- American Water Works Association, 2026 State of the Water Industry: Executive Summary (survey fielded 21 September to 31 October 2025, n=2,171; overtime narrative, impact-of-overtime table and strategies chart on page 11; utility-executive attribution of the 54% emergency-repairs figure on page 2; top ten issues ranking on page 3). Free PDF: https://www.awwa.org/wp-content/uploads/SOTWI-2026-Executive-Summary.pdf
- American Water Works Association, 2026 State of the Water Industry full report (Table 18, n=769; Figure 16, n=770; Table 19, n=764; Figure 17, n=759; job categories, n=1,273; methodology note on skipped and unshown questions). Supplied on request; report page and request form: https://www.awwa.org/state-of-the-water-industry/
- American Water Works Association, news release, “AWWA State of the Water Industry Report underscores infrastructure, funding challenges,” 30 April 2026: https://www.awwa.org/AWWA-Articles/awwa-state-of-the-water-industry-report-underscores-infrastructure-funding-challenges/
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, “Water and Wastewater Treatment Plant and System Operators,” Quick Facts, last modified 27 August 2026: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/water-and-wastewater-treatment-plant-and-system-operators.htm
Who wrote this
EQUA AI builds EQUA AIMMS. On the subject of this article it does one narrow thing, and does it well: it attaches every event to the asset that caused it.
A callout at 2am then belongs to a pump with a history, not to a month and a crew. That is the record Figure 16 says a third of these respondents do not keep, and it is what turns an overtime line in a budget into something a superintendent can actually manage.