For a small utility, a hydrant program can look overwhelming on paper - thousands of hydrants, each theoretically due for an annual inspection, with two or three field staff to cover all of them. In practice, most utilities that manage this well are not inspecting everything on the same fixed schedule.
Prioritizing by criticality - fire protection needs, proximity to schools or hospitals, and redundancy in the surrounding distribution system - alongside known condition, lets crews focus limited time where it matters most, while still working through the full inventory on a realistic multi-year cycle rather than an aspirational annual one.
Mobile inspection tools that let a crew log a hydrant in the field, in roughly the time it already takes to do the inspection, matter more than a more sophisticated schedule that no one has time to execute.