About Utilities Kingston – Water & Wastewater Treatment Division
Utilities Kingston is a city-owned corporation that is dedicated to the responsible management of safe, reliable utility services for communities in and around Kingston, Ontario. As a provider of vital public services to the area, the Water and Wastewater Division at Utilities Kingston ensures that clean drinking water is delivered to over 36,000 customers every day and that wastewater is collected and treated with the highest safety standards.
The Challenge
Utilities Kingston underwent an organizational restructure with a vision to streamline operations and improve efficiencies at all levels within the organization. Key challenges that Utilities Kingston were experiencing included:
- Poor work order workflow
- Vast geographic location of facilities
- Division re-organization
- Reactive maintenance processes
- New operational processes
- Staff apprehension to implement a new technology system Utilities Kingston wanted to find a product that would help them resolve these inefficiencies, integrate new processes and help them to implement industry best practices.
WaterTrax Maintenance Management allows us to capture the full picture of what it takes to fully complete a job, so we can easily determine what the cost is to keep the routine maintenance in all of our facilities.
The Solution: WaterTrax
Utilities Kingston adopted the WaterTrax Maintenance Management system. It was important to the Water and Wastewater Division to implement a product that would be accepted by staff and management, was easy to use, specific to their industry, accessible across a vast network of treatment facilities and that could be used to provide a preventive maintenance approach. The WaterTrax Maintenance Management system allowed Utilities Kingston to address all of these challenges. WaterTrax’s ability to seamlessly consolidate inventory data and work flow management into an easy to use, cloud-based system ensured the solution fulfilled the operational needs of the division. Within a few months of implementation, Kevin and his staff were comfortable using the system and began seeing the benefits and results from using Maintenance Management. “We were fully implemented in just 7 weeks. During the training sessions, the majority of the staff’s reaction was ‘that’s it?’ We were all really surprised with how easy it was to use.”
The Benefits
With WaterTrax, Utilities Kingston has been able to implement a user-friendly system which has made the progressive changes in the organization’s structure, workflow and culture have a positive result.
Cloud-based: Accessible anytime and anywhere – As a cloud-based solution, WaterTrax Maintenance Management is always at your fingertips
Ease of implementation: User-friendly application – The implementation process for WaterTrax Maintenance Management is quick and easy. WaterTrax provides a combination of on site training and customized online training sessions at both operations and management levels. During the training sessions, staff gained hands-on experience which resulted in positive user acceptance. Following implementation, WaterTrax users at Utilities Kingston were surprised at how simple and easy the system is to use.
We were fully implemented in just 7 weeks. During the training sessions, the majority of the staff’s reaction was ‘that’s it?’ We were all really surprised with how easy it was to use.
Inventory Database: Reliable documentation and historical records – WaterTrax Maintenance Management allows organizations to maintain an accurate historical record of all asset information and maintenance activities. Utilities Kingston uses WaterTrax to manage their parts inventory list, ordering schedules, equipment information and manufacture guidelines, preferred vendors, work orders, time logs, preventive maintenance schedules and all associated costs.
Preventive Maintenance: A proactive approach – With preventive maintenance (PM) scheduling, Utilities Kingston can proactively build routine maintenance schedules into their workflow. The ability to create PM schedules is critical in shifting the Utilities Kingston towards a more proactive approach in handling their assets.
Sense of Ownership: Empowering staff to set their own work days – Work orders in WaterTrax Maintenance Management are designed so that a supervisor or manager can setup and assign work orders for their staff. When a staff person logs into WaterTrax, they see a list of work orders in their inbox that has been assigned to them. Individuals are responsible for managing the process of those work orders from start to finish. For Kingston’s Treatment Facility Division, this has enabled the staff to take ownership over their roles; they schedule their own daily work routines and manage their jobs themselves.
Solution Highlights
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An effective CMMS to manage water and wastewater treatment operations across multiple locations
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Resolved inefficiencies, integrated new processes and implemented industry best practices
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Access anytime & anywhere
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Preventative Maintenance approach
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Empowered staff to set their own work days