The water sector in Jordan suffers from common problems and face many challenges in terms of water supply and sanitation service provision. These challenges are summarized in water scarcity; increasing demand due to growing populations and conflicts of water users; rapid urbanization; water pollution; water quality issues; limited access to drinking water & sanitation services in rural areas. These in return reflect as challenges on water utility level such bad operation and maintenance practices; increasing levels of non-revenue water, weak cost recovery and bad asset management, low energy efficiency, lack of human resources development and lack of management and technical capacity. As a result, water utilities in Jordan still lag behind in achieving the 6th Sustainable Development Goal, therefore, adopting good management practices utilizing Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) tools is required to use limited resources efficiently and deliver water and sanitation service in an effective manner. Benchmarking is considered one of IWRM tools for performance improvement through systematic search and adaptation of leading practices and learning from the best. This PhD research looked at current state of performance assessment mechanism at Jordan water utilities, and investigated the reasons why benchmarking is not applied in the Jordanian water sector. The research developed and tested benchmarking system for water utilities in Jordan. One utility benchmarking exercise for 9 water utilities in Jordan has been applied for the first time in Jordan, following international benchmarking practice, utilizing online data collection tool to collect data variables and calculate performance indicators from the participating utilities. A series of workshops and performance assessment meetings were conducted and performance plans were set to the participating utilities. Data reliability was evaluated and data sources gaps are now identified at each water utility, performance indicators correlations related to water losses, energy efficiency, cost recovery and human resources were investigated and analyzed. The research built on the pilot benchmarking program outcomes and conducted scientific work of investigating performance indicators correlations. The research applied the German benchmarking system over Jordan benchmarking results. Then average values of performance data for year 2014 representing Jordan’s water sector were benchmarked and compared with similar international benchmarking initiatives (regionally and internationally) following the 5 pillars of German benchmarking system. The results of this research are a very useful entry point for helping to solve water utility management challenges in Jordan, and can be replicated and expanded to other similar water utilities in the Arab region.