Control Engineering

3/28/2007
April 3, 2007

In January we discussed the biggest obstacle to moving this project forward was getting the City comfortable that our selected open project architecture will integrate well with what is being planned for the overall $600M 15 year sewer improvement program. That overall program is still not fully defined, although an initial study and consultant recommendations were presented in March.

Since this project began, all new management has been put in place within the City's Department of Public Works (DPW), their engineering and wastewater departments. In addition, a new engineering firm has been contracted with by the City to manage the overall sewer improvement program. Yes, all the buying influences have changed!

It has become apparent in meetings over the past few months that the new administration has a much different point of view than the previous one.

There is now an interest in a common approach to SCADA that can be applied to the treatment plants as well as outlying pump stations, possibly with a monitoring and command capability from DPW headquarters. The new DPW director and his staff engineer have taken a personal interest in the layout and design on the system, unlike the previous administration.

Recently, they took the time to visit a much larger municipality to inspect their central SCADA installation.

There are preliminary plans for the new engineering firm to develop a master plan for controls and instrumentation. It is possible the project could be delayed until this study is completed. Delays have to be balanced against the need to spend the federal portion of the project funding. The inability of the City to obtain spare parts for most of the remaining 38 existing RTU controllers is also at issue. At present, should an RTU failure occur a station would need to be manually operated until an emergency controller replacement from another manufacturer could be designed, built and installed.

The good news is that we proposed, and the City accepted, an alternate to the originally specified client-server architecture: the use of an open standards, web-based architecture that neatly supports the City's current desire to centralize control and possibly add a state-of-the-art command center at DPW headquarters. The open architecture of the system we are installing is the key. As a 15-year program will proceed in many bid packages, and technology will change significantly, it is hard to guarantee compatability and expandability without obsolence in any other way.

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