Control Engineering

4/11/2007
April 16, 2007

Today Stan Prutz met with the City's staff engineer serving as special assistant to the Department of Public Works (DPW) director. He's confirmed the City will make a decision regarding how best to proceed with the remaining 38 RTUs after the primary consultant has completed a comprehensive master plan for the municipal wastewater system's controls and instrumentation.

There is good news in all this. When we started this project, we advised against a traditional client-server approach as not really serving what we saw were the needs of the department. We wrote our original proposal offering a base bid as they requested. We also proposed an alternate employing a web-based architecture, with a focus on automating a number of reporting requirements, workflows and work orders. The alternate also includes on-going engineering support for several years to work with the City's operations personnel to insure a full and successful implementation.

The intent has been to use systems engineering concepts to get greater value out of the City's investment in SCADA than has been typical with traditional SCADA purchases. While the City issued us a contract for this alternate proposal, there really hasn't been much of an appreciation for where we are trying to take them.

The new DPW director and his staff engineer are clearly supportive of the automating of reporting, workflows and work orders. They are supportive of an open standards-based design. They see value in comprehensive on-going support after the installation to assure the system performs as designed over the longer term. The establishment of a master plan and City standards for wastewater control and instrumentation is long overdue and needed to be done from the top levels of DPW. I believe they will demand a master plan design that obtains greater value from their SCADA system than is the industry norm. In short, the current DPW administration is in tune with what the key issues are and, in my opinion, is moving the wastewater department in the right direction.

With this higher level support, it is much more likely that operations personnel will be willing to support and take advantage of these advanced features within the SCADA system we've been installing. After all, when we say it, it is simply a recommendation. When the head of DPW says it, it will get done.

We are fortunate our alternate was selected; it is unlikely the original specified client-server architecture could have supported where the City is now headed.

Posted by on April 16, 2007 | Comments (0)