Alderwood Water and Wastewater District Leverages iFIX to Increase Reliability Across the District

Alderwood Water and Wastewater District (AWWD) is a Washington State special purpose district, providing water and wastewater services to southwest Snohomish County since 1931. AWWD is the largest special purpose water and sewer district in the state.

AWWD provides one of the most crucial public health and economic support roles in their community: ensuring that our customers have access to safe, high-quality drinking water in their homes and businesses, and reliable wastewater collection and treatment services. They also place the protection of their Puget Sound ecosystem as one of our highest priorities.

They’ve been using GE Vernova’s Proficy iFIX solution for over 18 years to improve productivity and process control across their wastewater treatment plant, and sewage pump stations with industrial-strength SCADA automation software and high-performance HMI.

Results from industrial-strength SCADA automation software and high-performance HMI:

18 years ago they had a mix of four systems that made up their SCADA, and they needed to simplify. They retired all their old telemetry systems and standardized on a full iFIX SCADA system. Since then, they've expanded the system multiple times, including a pumping station system that they converted to iFIX back in the early 2010’s.

18 years ago, after implementing a full iFIX SCADA System, it took years to go in and tweak the automation equipment and fix all the problems in the field. iFIX helped signify the problems and point out what they needed to do so they couldimprove their systems gradually to decrease downtime.

Alderwood Water runs a highly advanced wastewater treatment plant membrane process on iFIX – including everything from screenings, to wastewater and managing the micro organisms that break down the waste, waste water processing and treatment for disposal, wastewater collections through lift stations and pumpstations. They also have drinking water pump stations to move large quantities of potable water. iFIX also handles their distribution monitoring and pressure reducing valves to maintain safety for their end consumer. They have water reservoirs monitor physical building sites and emergency power systems through iFIX The Districtalso monitor the iFix and SCADA system itself and use drivers to monitor the system hardware and equipment that's core to providing the SCADA information.

Their engineering group is highly regarded in the water and wastewater industry for automation control systems. Their sewage collection sites consist of a storage tank and multiple types of pumps, and instrumentation to measure the waste water level – with iFIX, they’re able to monitor the pump status, the pump Amperage, the site system information, the valving and vacuum systems, and the priming system where necessary. iFIX alerts them if any of that local control isn’t working as intended.

They’re also monitoring the physical security aspects of sites, the power at the sites, the weather (indoor and outdoor temperature), and water quality. Most sites have emergency power generators, so they'll monitor everything from the generator functionality and common alarms to the power data incoming and the equipment load. They also monitor remote system information from the internal cabinets to make sure that they’re aware if there's a problem that can be prevented from downtime.

They do not have a control room where information is sent – but even on after-hours –they notify specific staff with the information they need. The electricans get the electrical system information, instrumentation techs get the instrumentation systems information, and the operations gets the operations alerts, and so on through the organization. iFIX enables them to analyze and disseminate that information in order to get it to the right people at the right time.

They also pull Historical data and reports from GE Historian. It is used to identify the best time to cut in water system piping or work on a waste water force main. In the wastewater lift stations, it helps predict the best time and how many Vacuum Trucks they would need to overcome the incoming flow for that site and the scheduled work. They use data for their water and sewer comprehensive plans to understand how their utility system is doing and whether they need to upsize pipes for the future growth. They pull data for their federal and state reporting requirements, and also with process change improvement and verify performance on new analytical instrumentation . Their operations team pulls data daily during the summer to understand water reserves lost and gained. Even their finance team uses data from iFIX to look at financial impacts and order to check for discrepancies.

They utilize iFIX as a training tool and an information drop. They’ve been intentional about laying out their graphics in a way that's easy enough to understand and teach staff who are new to their organization on how things work across their water system, and wastewater system. They ensure there’s additional information available on details related to the site, physical address, communication method. At their water reservoir sites, they’re able to show detailed level information to monitor critical system points like minimum fire flow levels on the HMI so there's no guesswork in a emergency. They’re also calculating capacities for their team so that if there's an emergency, they don’t have to manually calculate how much is in storage, it’s all displayed on their HMI.