Syed Shoaib Mohideen Great ...
Published by John Leeuwenburg, Global Product Manager Water Office at Realworld Systems
Great that you have requested some help based on experiences of colleagues in the water industry and there are quite a few responses. I would like to use this forum to state that you have really brought a number of issues and aspects to the forefront with respect to water management and wanted to respond to you as well.
In essence what you have identified are a number of business processes that you wish to address within your organization and rest assured there is no single software package that can do everything. You have mentioned 4 items that need to be addressed and as such wanted to address them. Namely:
- water supply rehabilitation
- leakage reduction project
- water supply network designs
- NRW maintenance
Topic 1 & 3 - Water Supply Rehabilitation and Network (re)design.
What I will assume here is that you mean the rehabilitation of water distribution networks. First and foremost, consideration must be given Data Registration, Data Quality, Data Quantity, Data Integrity and Data Management on the assets. Asset data is the basis to be able to use any sort of formula to determine how you achieve a rehabilitation strategy. Network (re)design should not be based solely on hydraulic analysis. Sure you get a working network, but have you considered optimizing that (re)design based on a number of configurable parameters that can provide various results but reduce your asset purchasing by millions of dollars, minimize the risk of your chosen solution and maximize the longevity of your assets?
Topic 2 & 4 - Leakage Reduction Project and NRW Maintenance
Many water utilities have Non Revenue Water levels approaching 50%. A leakage reduction project can entail so many options, but what is going to give you the best result in the quickest order of time. Non Revenue Water can be addressed by a number of business processes within your organization. For example, is there consideration for example about DMA’s, Outage Management System, Sensor data, Leak Detection Logger integration, Risk Analysis, SCADA integration, Call Before You Dig and Soil Types vs Water Pipe material? and how much money will you save on electricity (depending on whether you have gravity working for you or not) to pump that water? that extra water that you are losing? My experience is that there are a number of approaches used to reduce Non Revenue Water but the bottom line is that without a structured approach to a single source of truth for asset data, it tends to be a costly adventure in trying to reduce NRW.
As Product Manager of Water Office, our team is constantly confronted with providing solutions in this arena. Should you wish to contact me, I can be reached at john.leeuwenburg@wateroffice.com