Water & Wastewater Success Stories - Sacramento

SACRAMENTO REGIONAL COUNTY SANITATION DISTRICT AND EMERSON PROCESS MANAGEMENT TEAM UP TO SAVE TIME AND TRAINING MONEY

Municipal infrastructure improvement projects are often called "public-private partnerships" in contract language, news releases and press briefings. However, few municipalities take the "partnership language" in contracts to the level the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District (SRCSD) has.

When SRCSD set out to replace the aging process control system in its wastewater treatment facility, plant managers knew its staff would only accept a centralized system designed and programmed through a true partnership with the supplier and engineering consultant - one that followed the rules of actual cooperation.

The Sacramento Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant treats an average of 180 million gallons of wastewater on an average day - 440 million gallons during wet weather and peak flow, and serves approximately 1 million people in Sacramento County. The facility's original process control system, installed in 1982, was challenged - among other problems, it had no redundancy, and no mechanism for automatic restart when power was lost. With a talented team of in-house programmers and operators who regularly modified the system to meet the plant's needs, SRCSD kept it going for close to 20 years.

Finding the Right Partners

SRCSD had two specific needs for the project. It wanted its staff involved in programming the new system, which would mean a contract with a large training component. Second, SRCSD wanted to minimize installation time - in water and wastewater, control system installation can be lengthy, due to the fact that facilities must stay operational during the upgrade. When writing the project specifications, SRCSD chose not only to include a "partnership" clause in the contract, but to also focus on that clause - a choice than brought its new distributed control system (DCS) online seven months ahead of schedule.

"We wrote our spec as a dream list," said Bill Hendrix, SRCSD Project Manager. "We've always had partnering language in our contracts, but never really made sure that partnering happened."

In 1998, SRCSD enlisted EMA Services, Inc. of Sacramento as its contractor, and chose its third partner, the Power & Water Solutions division of Emerson Process Management, to supply its groundbreaking Ovation Information & Control System for the facility.

Ovation, the first DCS to offer real-time, mission-critical control on a PC platform, provides an unprecedented level of performance and power. The system's open architecture reduces the risk of obsolescence often associated with proprietary control systems and reduces customer dependence on the system supplier. Ovation is also easily incorporated into existing IT strategies, providing better and more accessible facility operation information.

"When we did an evaluated bid process, Emerson's technical and training expertise put them over the top," Hendrix said. "And I get the feeling that they are more open to the sort of partnering we were talking about than others."

Reinforcing Goals

When Emerson entered the partnership, the project began to take its final form. A regular schedule of partnering meetings was established to reinforce the goal of the project, and to trouble shoot issues and possible challenges that could arise during installation.

In their first meeting, prior to the contract negotiations, the three groups (EMA, Emerson and SRCSD) identified individual and shared goals for the projects, and also defined the elements of success, and the advantages of forming a partnership. The group looked at characteristics of the best and worst negotiations, and considered the strengths each partner brought to the table. Schedules were set for negotiations, and information on the old and new systems was exchanged.

A tough negotiation schedule in which the team met daily for nearly six months to discuss and review each detail of the system design and specifications resulted in an agreement that clearly stated project goals, performance and functionality expectations, and prepared the team for the implementation phase of the project.

When negotiations were completed, regularly scheduled partnership meetings allowed SRCSD, EMA and Emerson to revisit program goals and discuss which parts of the project were working, and which weren't working so well. The group focused much of its discussion around the Cost/Trust Relationship, and used information from a University of Texas study which looked at how the trust level between a customer and supplier affected the cost of a project.

"We had workshops about every four months, and some additional social get-togethers to foster the partnership," Hendrix said.

Getting More For the Money

In order to meet SRCSD's goal of training its staff to be self-sufficient in modifying, enhancing and maintaining its new Ovation System, Emerson Process Management set up a training facility, as well as its factory floor testing process in Sacramento, adjacent to the wastewater treatment plant. The facility made it possible for the municipality to save money on travel costs while training more staff, instead of taking select plant staff back to Emerson's divisional headquarters in Pittsburgh for training and testing.

"The plan to bring the training facility and factory floor to Sacramento allowed us the luxury of training 16 of our own people right on site on the exact equipment they would be using in the plant," Hendrix said. "We got more people trained for our money invested."

As the project moved along, the time invested in partnership activities allowed the group to work through the project's pitfalls and challenges at a quicker pace, and avoided the need to interpret the contract for each issue. It also provided for easier solutions to technical issues, and the ability to maneuver work schedules to meet the needs of the project. The time saved through the partnering process resulted in a shorter installation period than SRCSD had asked for in its "dream spec."

"I expected we would be looking at delays, but we ended up cutting time from the contract," Hendrix said. "Overall, it's just been great to work with Emerson. They're very professional in the way they respond, and have a great tech staff."