Water & Wastewater Treatment

WWT June 2015

Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine

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8 | JUNE 2015 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk Comment D uring AMP4 and AMP5, many of the UK's water utility companies deployed a significant number of long-term level and flow monitors with the primary objective of reducing the number of pollution and flooding incidents from their sewer networks. Installed at, or close, to Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) – the pinch-points in our predominantly combined sewer systems – the objective was to inform network managers of sewer blockages that could cause polluting spills as well as providing regulatory information on the frequency and duration of costly spill events. This model represents network monitoring where the monitors are relatively "smart" but it's not yet smart sewer network monitoring. Before it can truly be called 'smart', sewer network monitoring needs to combine several elements to ensure water companies have a full circle understanding of exactly what's happening in their networks at any given time. Firstly, monitors must ideally be battery-powered (five years operation is now normal) with wireless telemetry so they can easily be deployed without the need for mains power or PSTN landlines. They should also be smart enough to "know' when to transmit data for scrutiny by the central analytical system. Finally, they must be properly maintained to ensure they operate reliably and effectively. Early industry thinking suggested that if monitor data were routed directly to the water company's SCADA system, it would result in the fully automated supervision of alarms and data - delivering the required pollution and flood reduction outcomes. Unfortunately, this has proven not to be the case for a number of reasons, many of which, with the benefit of hindsight, are rather obvious. Lack of maintenance is one of the most significant reasons for the failure of deployed monitoring systems. A second performance issue is caused by the blanket alarm suppression techniques widely used during periods of wet or stormy weather when hundreds of alarms flood into SCADA control rooms: even the very best SCADA-based monitoring system is limited to providing confirmation of dry weather polluting spills. Another fact to note is that whilst many water companies are collecting data from legacy monitoring assets, the volume of data to si— through means they are generally not doing anything with it. The good news is that for AMP6 it is already possible to implement smart network monitoring which is specifically designed to address all of these issues. Water companies can now rely on managed systems to deliver: timely reports of instantaneous blockages causing pollutions during dry weather; timely reports of wet weather blockages increasing flood risk or causing unnecessary polluting discharges; predictive identification and preventative reporting of network issues which, if le— unattended, would lead to blockages and consequent flooding or pollution. For an industry striving to reduce flooding and prevent pollutions, the benefits of smarter network monitoring are clear. Smart sewer monitoring – are you in? Steve WoodS, MaNagiNg dirEcTor, dETEcTroNic A culture of superior service F leet availability and reliability have always been essential elements of pump hire specialists' service commitment. Now, as environmental requirements become more stringent and water companies address the challenges of delivering AMP6 while maintaining the existing network, hire specialists must be more responsive and accountable than ever. It is in the very nature of hire pumps that they will o—en be required on a business critical basis and a fast turnaround. While some hire requirements are for planned maintenance or asset improvement, many are reactive hires in response to an existing pump failure or a temporary requirement on site. As pump technology advances, water companies should expect hire specialists to invest in new equipment that broadens their range and capabilities in addition to maintaining excellent fleet availability. Service is about culture as well as capabilities, however, and water companies are increasingly keen to see evidence of how equipment and support service resources will be deployed with real time accountability. For the pump hire specialist, that not only means responding quickly to requirements but also advising on specification, which could potentially mean changes to the original request to overcome challenges such as site accessibility, power supply availability or working in tandem with owned pump assets. O—en there is a need to answer the water company's bespoke service demands as part of a tailored service level agreement and hire specialists need to be open to negotiating any specific requirements as part of the hire package. Greater accountability also means providing more transparent communication: contemporary technology means that hire companies should now keep the client informed of estimated delivery in real time, including any unexpected delays, as a standard service provision. Once the hire pump arrives on site, preventative maintenance at regular intervals during the hire period ensures that any potential reliability issues are identified and fixed early. Water companies also need to be able to contact the hire specialist on a 24/7 basis for prompt reactive maintenance. O—en hire companies give a named engineer contact to provide the client with peace of mind but, in reality, this one client/one engineer approach is not compatible with a full out-of-hours service seven days a week. Instead, Sykes Pumps redirects all out of hours calls to a call centre from where they are fielded to an on-call engineer who can respond quickly to the problem and be on site within the specified journey time. Not only does it guarantee that the call is answered, it also ensures that there is an 'on call' engineer available to respond to the call out who is guaranteed not to have exceeded his working hours limit for the day. The call centre service also incorporates an escalation system designed to alert senior members of the operational team if the issue cannot be resolved immediately or if increased manpower resources are needed for multiple or complex call outs. It's just one example of how hire companies must consider service in terms of genuinely meeting water company challenges rather than ticking the boxes on a tender submission. david HimSWortH, UK opEraTioNs dirEcTor, syKEs pUMps

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