Distribution system reliability for most utilities is maintained by the knowledge of a few key personnel. Generally, these water maintenance personnel use a good memory, repair records, a large wall map and a hydraulic model of the larger transmission mains to help identify problem areas and maintain distribution system performance. A tool that is becoming increasing popular and affordable for many aspects of water utility management, including the tracking of main failures, is the microcomputer. The objectives of the research were to: (a) identify pipe characteristics most likely to fail, (b) assess the resources necessary to utilize microcomputer in this application, (c) compare and contrast results with those of a previous study that only analyzed large transmission mains, and (d) evaluate the relevance of only analyzing a sample of a large utility compared to the time and cost necessary to study the entire network.