Exploring the Advantages of Mobile Technology at Treatment Plants

Alan Fabiano, a technology manager at Woodard & Curran, recently published an article titled, “Digital Data Collection Helps Cut Out the Paper,” in Treatment Plant Operator magazine. The article describes how operators at treatment plants can use mobile technologies—along with simple, flexible, and affordable applications developed for them—to make data management more efficient and accurate, streamlining every step of collection, analysis, and reporting process.

For example, the Woodard & Curran team that operates and maintains the 330-MGD Union Park pump station in South Boston, Massachusetts, and nine other sanitary, stormwater, and water pumping stations in the area uses handheld tablets to enter data on their outside pump station checklist forms. This allows them to store run times and retrieve data for monthly reports. The staff also enters corrective work orders through a web application on the tablet, which is automatically loaded into their computerized maintenance management system (CMMS). This generates a work order that can be dispatched to a tablet, alerting a staff member in the field to complete the task.

Going paperless has advantages. “We don’t lose the data,” notes Mark Cleary, Woodard & Curran’s plant manager at the Union Park pump station. “It’s stored safely, and we only have to enter the data once. The process saves paper, and in the end, we have an electronic copy that can be viewed from any PC anywhere.”

Read more about the benefits of mobile technology in Alan’s article on TPO, and read Steve Niro’s thoughts about using mobile technology at operations sites on our blog.

Alan Fabiano is responsible for operations and maintenance technology implementations for operations data management (OPS) databases, maintenance data management, mobile applications, GIS and other hardware or software support at Woodard & Curran. He can be reached at afabiano@woodardcurran.com.

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Jennifer Andrews Vice President Marketing

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