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Water Utility Adopts Reliability Solution to Improve Efficiency

REACHING AN ‘ENLIGHTENED’ LEVEL OF RELIABILITY MATURITY THROUGH OPERATIONAL RELIABILITY IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM IMPLEMENTATION

Overview

This sizable wastewater treatment plant services a major midwestern city of the United States, ensuring a continuous, safe return of water to the environment. Allied Reliability worked with the public utility company to optimize its facility operations, focusing on the implementation of an innovative Maintenance and Reliability Program for critical process equipment. Like all city wastewater plants, reliability was a big concern because any process shutdown or service interruption would affect the entire coverage area. For this location, a wastewater system compromise had the added environmental risk of polluting a nearby river with untreated water. In today’s economic climate, another concern was how to enhance the performance of aging equipment for as long as possible. Our reliability best practices and equipment maintenance strategies helped extend the lifecycle of assets, minimize unplanned failures, reduce costly repairs or replacements, while also safeguarding precious natural resources.

The Reliability Journey

The client’s reliability journey began with Allied consultants performing a thorough onsite Reliability Systems Review to assess the current state. This included interviews, alignment workshops, and direct observations to identify areas of excellence, as well as uncovering bad actors. Assessment findings of elevated maintenance costs led to the recommendation of improving maintenance processes. This reliability solution was deemed an essential tool for enhancing maintenance efficiencies and effectiveness, leading to reduced costs and more sustainable operations. To measure success, a charter was created, complete with milestones, KPIs, and expected results for the desired future state. The project’s vision and business case—the why, the how, and the benefits—were presented to upper management for their buy-in. According to Allied Reliability’s Solutions Delivery Manager, “It was not just about a project, but a key enabler of business transformation.”

Project Highlights

The implementation of a reliability program was foundational to the project’s goal of improving wastewater treatment reliability via more structured planning and scheduling of maintenance work, as well as developing meaningful maintenance strategies based on well-defined failure modes. A crucial step was to compile an accurate, robust Asset Register in the computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) that included:

Once implemented, the operational reliability program brought the 40-year-old facility’s reliability practices up to date with preventative, lower cost maintenance; minimal downtime losses; and scalability for future expansion. A corporate culture change, from reactive to proactive, also contributed to the project’s success. This mindset was communicated across the workforce and leadership team through Change Management training and Reliability Fundamentals training. The establishment of an enterprise-wide governance structure was a natural next step to ensure changes to company-wide processes and procedures are sustained.

The overall reliability journey and cultural transformation was supported by the company’s top-down commitment, and its mission to safely provide environmental and economic stewardship through reliability, innovation, and adaptability benefitting residents, industries, and contributing partners.

Successful Outcome

Allied Reliability applies a Reliability Systems Model (RSM), with before and after scores from 1 to 5, to measure progress in clients’ reliability journeys. The model looks at these parameters: governance, proactive enablers, loss elimination, engineered reliability, and operational excellence. The water treatment plant’s overall score initially fell at Level 2-Experimenting. Upon project completion, that score went up to Level 3-Enlightened.

The accomplishments set forth in the project’s charter and client’s business plan are on track to meet the specified objectives. For instance, the plant will realize $5.1MM in cost improvement over three years, followed by a year-over-year maintenance savings of $470K. And with continuous improvements, they are positioned to further reduce corrective maintenance costs.

In summary, the successful Operational Reliability Improvement program will elevate the water utility’s capability to deliver superior service to its customer base, protect the surrounding environment, and support the city’s anticipated growth.

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Allied Reliability is the industrial and manufacturing sector’s leading Holistic Reliability Solutions provider, bringing together processes, content, knowledge, and data to optimize the asset reliability journey for its customers.