Collaborative Experiences in Effective Waters Network Improvements
Annual Conference
❄
The expectations of water utilities to provide consistently high and resilient levels of service to customers and transparency to both internal and external stakeholders are increasing.
As water and wastewater provider to more than 1.4 million rural and metropolitan residents within Auckland (New Zealand's largest city), Watercare’s mission is to provide reliable, safe and efficient water and wastewater services, and our vision is to be trusted by our communities for exception performance every day.
This paper provides a summary of two recent Watercare water network projects, and demonstrates successful outcomes through a collaborative working relationship between operations and planning staff. Issue identification by operations staff, followed by comprehensive and collaborative investigation and modelling of scenarios covering service levels, operational performance and resilience can inform a plan of works that will achieve a successful outcome, with minimal impact to customers.
Case study 1 covers the commissioning of a new 900L/s bulk water booster pump station which, through increased pipeline velocity, had the potential to cause discoloured water to over 60,000 people and highlighted a significant network resilience issue through reliance on a single bulk pipeline. The subsequent re-zoning of a range of distribution networks in the nearby Lincoln and Swanson water supply zones (WSZs) supplying 20,000 customers was achieved using existing underutilised pipelines, allowing the future creation of additional zones, which could reduce pressure and provide more efficient and resilient network management.
Case study 2 covers supply security improvements to the Albany area which supplies 30,000 people and a major commercial area. When a burst occurred in 2015, an unknown bulk cross-connection made the supply problematic to isolate and required a CCTV inspection to identify the location. Subsequent modelling supported the successful installation of multiple pressure reducing valves (PRVs), valves and network strengthening so each supply can now be separately isolated without impacting customers.
Today’s industry professionals have access to increasingly capable and highly mobile tools and analytic capability and the adoption of these tools can provide powerful real-time insight and collaboration opportunities. Watercare is actively developing a consolidated approach to capturing, transforming, storing, reviewing, and utilising data to provide benefits to our staff and regional partners - particularly as it relates to planning the creation of new assets to meet Auckland’s growth.
Case study 3 outlines the identification of excessive and variable water pressures in the Takapuna and Northcote WSZs. Models were used to support the installation of seven PRVs and resulted in a reduction in breaks and disruption which could have affected up to 50,000 people.
This case study also demonstrates how enhanced digital technology can make it easier and more accurate to identify, analyse and quantify issues in the network, assist with more informed decisions, and make it easier to communicate impacts to internal teams and external stakeholders. As Watercare navigates the nexus of people, process, and developing technology, we will also gain better insight into system performance, changes and the influencing factors relating to demand profiles. This will allow us to develop more targeted non-revenue water reduction and network efficiency programmes.