Teamwork Pays Off

Teamwork Pays Off

One water authority, three municipalities, three engineering firms, and three general contractors form a great team with one systems integrator. When the Town of Wytheville and the Counties of Carroll and Wythe came together to form the New River Regional Water Authority (NRRWA) in order to construct and manage a new 4.0 MGD water treatment plant, they knew that communication was vital. So important, in fact, that they decided to hire one systems integrator for all the controls, SCADA, and process communication for the Authority’s main project as well as all the ancillary projects for the individual municipalities.

The NRRWA knew that they were building a complex system which required all the pieces to work together seamlessly. Instead of gambling with the integration portion of the projects through competitive bidding they decided to directly contract with one integrator to insure continuity from start to finish of the three year project. Over a period of several months, the NRRWA reviewed proposals and qualifications as well as visited the customers of six systems integrators. At the end of the process, Sunapsys emerged as the winner, demonstrating technical and process expertise as well as a collaborative approach to projects which would be essential to the success of this project.

Sunapsys is working and coordinating with three design engineering firms to ensure that the control system at each site will meet the site’s control requirements as well as integrate with the system-wide SCADA system. In the second stage of this project, Sunapsys is designing and fabricating control panels for each site. In order to reduce costs and provide redundancy, Sunapsys is utilizing an open design consisting of off-the-shelf micro-PLCs for control at each site and at the new WTP.

NRRWA secured Judy Construction to construct the new WTP plant. In addition, Wythe and Carroll Counties also have other construction contractors working on water lines, tanks, and pump station facilities to transfer and distribute treated water to their jurisdictions. Sunapsys provides control panels, instrumentation, and computer equipment to the different general contractors working at each site. During the construction, Sunapsys coordinates with the contractors and provides technical oversight for installation of the instrumentation and control equipment. Sunapsys also coordinates with other equipment suppliers to ensure that the electrical interfaces will work together.

DSL communication between the sites is provided by Citizens Co-op. Sunapsys secures communications at each site using network routers and firewalls. All communications over the public network between the routers is encrypted, creating a Virtual Private Network between sites.

The unified SCADA system will allow monitoring and control of all water distribution from both the new Austinville WTP and the existing Town of Wytheville WTP. The completed system is scheduled to be operational in mid 2009, but is anticipated to be complete in early 2009.