Richard Ercolini, Southeast Regional Manager for Tesco Controls, wrote an article for Water Online entitled “WWEMA Window: The Importance of Early Design System Integration“, which was published on March 16, 2023. He discusses funding for projects, specifically SCADA (Supervisory Controls and Data Acquisition) through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) by which monies are starting to flow from the federal government into State Revolving Funds, or SRFs, to assist municipalities with upgrading an aging infrastructure. Read the full article here.
When deployed properly, SCADA systems can be a useful tool to not only gather information, but also to provide a means of preventative maintenance that can save the municipality money down the line by getting out in front of large expenditures due to component failure. Early design considerations by including a reputable system integrator should be seen as of equal importance to sizing a pump, the pipes in the system, civil considerations, etc.
The involvement of a reputable system integrator in design stages as early as 30% will go a long way in saving money down the road during construction and implementation. Items like future expansion, what software to select, remote viewing and alarm notification, cybersecurity, and many others, can be discussed in workshops with the design engineer and/or the municipality to tailor the system around the owner’s needs. These early design workshops will help determine how many servers and/or workstations will be required, location of the equipment, software packages, number of tags plus space for future growth, communications media to remote telemetry units (RTUs) in-plant or off-site, alarm notification methods, remote viewing of the SCADA from thin clients, cybersecurity protections for the SCADA system as well as the RTUs, etc. This information will assist in creating the design for the overall system and will help provide accurate budgetary estimates for funding considerations.
As monies from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law begin to flow into the industry, new SCADA systems and upgrades of existing systems will be commonplace. If not treated with extensive care and consideration during the design, SCADA will be under-utilized, under-appreciated, and in the long run will cost more money than originally budgeted for. By including a reputable system integrator in the early design process, the utilization of the system will be a key component of the discussion and design.
Richard Ercolini is the Southeast Regional Manager for Tesco Controls and a member of the Water and Wastewater Equipment Manufacturers Association (WWEMA), a non-profit trade association that has been working for water and wastewater technology and service providers since 1908. WWEMA’s members supply the most sophisticated leading-edge technologies and services, offering solutions to every water-related environmental problem and need facing today’s society. For more information about WWEMA, visit www.wwema.org.