About Penticton Wastewater Treatment Plant
The Wastewater Treatment Plant at the City of Penticton are proud that they comply with some of the most stringent provincial and federal regulatory requirements in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Serving a population of 33,500, the team at the Wastewater Treatment Plant is comprised of 11 staff and 7 operators who are committed to treating wastewater to provincial and federal standards before the water is returned to the receiving environment. With a large number of stakeholders, it is important for the Wastewater Treatment Plant to ensure accurate data for their reporting requirements and overall water quality purposes.
The Challenge
Before WaterTrax, the team was using Excel for data management, and they were having some difficulties with the tool. “While our lab routines were similar to what they are now, the whole process was much more time consuming,” commented Randy Craig, Wastewater Treatment Plant Supervisor at Penticton. “Excel is great for storing data but it’s much more difficult to use it for reporting or QA/QC. There was a lot more copy/pasting and things just weren’t as efficient. Data accessibility was also an area we were struggling with.” Jenna Sawri, an Operator at Penticton, added, “Reporting was definitely a difficult area for us. For example, the EMS reporting took up hours of my time, up to a full day of work.”
The Solution: WaterTrax
In 2017, the Penticton Wastewater Treatment Plant decided to make the switch to WaterTrax, a tool that they hoped would help them with their reporting requirements and data management. By the end of the year, the Penticton Wastewater Treatment Plant was set up with WaterTrax, and they were using the software in January 2018. It wasn’t long before Penticton started to see the benefits of the software. Not only did they find the software easy to use, they were also impressed by the time savings afforded by WaterTrax, especially in regards to reporting. In addition, WaterTrax has helped Penticton to ensure better access to their data, and have found that the software’s alerting functions have improved the whole QA/QC process. Overall, WaterTrax has enabled the whole team at Penticton to spend less time on manual processes and has allowed them to spend time on other, more important work.
EMS Reporting
“The whole EMS reporting process was awful before WaterTrax,” commented Jenna Sawri. “It was just a mess.” Previously, Excel or Microsoft Notebook was being used for EMS reporting, which was difficult to use for this purpose. When mistakes happened, Jenna Sawri remarked how difficult it was to dig through them all. “With WaterTrax, the whole process takes me only 30 minutes instead of a full day of work. Because the software is so well laid out, it’s pretty hard to screw up. So I obviously saw huge time savings efficiencies with the EMS reporting tool alone. WaterTrax reporting capabilities are a lot more robust compared to what we were using before.” After implementing WaterTrax, Jenna Sawri was able to realize a 94% efficiency gain in regards to EMS reporting.
WaterTrax is now a part of all of our daily lives, and it makes all of our lives easier, especially in regards to reporting. We’ve seen the benefits that it has brought for everyone in our department.
Data Management
“Overall, WaterTrax has improved our data management practices,” commented Randy Craig. “We now have better access to data, and as a manager I can check things even when I’m on vacation, for example, and have better oversight into what’s going on.” The alerting feature has also been a key factor in ensuring data integrity for the team at Penticton. “If parameters are off, with WaterTrax, our team can see right away when there’s been an entry error and get that corrected much faster than if we were using Excel. The alerts allow us to dig into it immediately. So in that way it’s really helped to improve data accuracy.”
Customer Support
In addition, the Wastewater Treatment Plant team at Penticton has had great experience with customer support with WaterTrax. “Our implementation experience was very straightforward, and it was easy to get a hold of WaterTrax support when we needed help,” commented Jenna Sawri. “The whole team did a great job, and we had regular conference calls to go over everything.” After the Wastewater Treatment Plant was up and running with WaterTrax, they continued to see great support from WaterTrax. “For example, when I was receiving a lot of errors the first time I was doing my EMS reporting with WaterTrax, I was able to contact support and we worked out a quick fix to the problem easily together. I’ve been really happy with the support.”
With WaterTrax, it’s been easier to do our reports and we’ve seen an improvement in data transfer within our department as well. As we are the only department currently on WaterTrax in Penticton, we are currently looking to promote WaterTrax to other departments because we know how much it will help them. We see it as a very smart idea to get everyone at Penticton on board and proficient with WaterTrax so that we can all better manage our data and reporting requirements.
Results
“With WaterTrax, it’s been easier to do our reports and we’ve seen an improvement in data transfer within our department as well. As we are the only department currently on WaterTrax in Penticton, we are currently looking to promote WaterTrax to other departments because we know how much it will help them. We see it as a very smart idea to get everyone at Penticton on board and proficient with WaterTrax so that we can all better manage our data and reporting requirements.”
Solution Highlights
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Faster data processing for compliance and reporting
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94% efficiency gain in regards to regulatory reporting
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Improved data management practices and workflows
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More timely data remediation thanks to automated alerting
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Responsive customer support during and after implementation