AWWA IMTECH59615

In 2001 EPCOR selected a work management system with visions of one application serving the needs of Power Distribution and Transmission, Power Substations, Water Treatment Plants, and Water Distribution. The product chosen had a plant work management focus but was based on new technology, allowing for future enhancements. In 2002 the application was rolled out for functionality in the first three areas. Now in 2003 the WaVE (Water IVARA Enhancements) Project is enhancing the existing system used by other areas of the utility by tailoring and customizing the product to meet business needs of water distribution. EPCOR Water Services Incorporated (EWSI) is aware of the potential benefits of improving work management functionality and realizes the significant roles of their Geographic Information System (GIS) and Water Network Information System (WNIS). They invested an abundant amount of initial research and business process modeling when considering the upgrades of their GIS and WNIS applications. The resulting decision was to start by consolidating the WNIS applications into a single Work Management System (WMS) using methods able to support GIS integration. In the City of Edmonton, EWSI's water distribution system consists of 3,100 km of pipeline, 14,570 hydrants, and 44,700 valves. Work orders for preventative and corrective maintenance, capital work, and emergency repairs maintain the city's infrastructure. The Work Management System will capture and organize all applicable data. To ease Water Distribution staff with the system's overwhelming functionality, WaVE included custom tools for efficiency. A simple yet effective example is the Multiple Update Tool that assigns the inspector and date checked to all facilities listed in a specified work order. WaVE provided an excellent opportunity to establish paper maintained preventative maintenance (PM) programs in the Work Management System. Non-electronic PM programs included: chamber maintenance (CM); chamber checking (CC); hydrant purging (HP); winter hydrant checking (WC); leak survey (LS); and, cathodic protection (CP). WaVE introduced the Area-Run-Facility concept to migrate all the PM programs, including Unidirectional Flushing (UDF), into the single application. The result was drastic improvement for the overall data handling, as shelves upon shelves of paper documents can be eliminated, as well as the enhancement of search and analysis capabilities. Includes figures.