WaterOPS(SM) is our cloud-based service that enables effective water supply sampling operations & monitoring management.
We are keenly aware of the range and frequency of the regulations of CFR40-141/2/3 concerning the sampling of water and the difficulty in maintaining compliance, along with the increasing costs of failure to report. Though there have been many innovations in other environmental fields, water distribution has not experienced the support of technological and process advances that many others have benefited from, nor the reduction in prices for such tools due to lack of competition and economies of scale.
For example In the USA there are:-
- Up to 155,0001 drinking water systems supplying water to nearly 320 million people
- In 2011 (latest EPA report on annual Public water system statistics), those systems reported 196,1102 violations of the Clean Drinking Water Acts.
- 76,0313 of those violations were a result of Monitoring & Reporting failures
- Over 20,0004 were issues of failure to provide public notice, failure to prepare and distribute a Consumer Confidence Report
- The cost of violations is calculated at $112m
- 143,1835 of these systems are classed as very small or small, with the fewest resources and the highest violation rates.
- A recent survey of operators revealed over 70% stating a top issue is keeping up with the federal and state regulations for their systems.
Since no easy solution exists to support them in the management of water monitoring or the agility to respond to 1176 EPA regulations (CFR40-141/2/3)6, OPS is designing its first product ‘WaterOPS’ to be the ultimate go-to service for managing the issue.
WaterOPS will do the groundwork in breaking down complex federal and state regulations using the OPS ‘Compliance Engine’(TM) that updates with the latest regulatory information and dynamically adjusts its alerting & reporting mechanisms, including daily task lists for field-samplers (with integration to GPS mapping), laboratory technicians and managers. Each user has their own dashboard to review the progress of their regular monitoring task-load and of the system as a whole.
This scalable solution is capable of managing the operational needs of:-
- Hundreds of thousands of samples per day
- Assimilating data into alerts and reports to rapidly inform key personnel
- Providing information on trends, areas that require investigation
- Provide advisory notices on violations before they occur
The core engine of our solution is being designed to support the entire USA water system network of drinking water providers, with a particular focus on providing an affordable service for the vast majority of system operators that are still using outmoded paper based logging (over 60% in a recent independent market survey).
Many municipal operators and distributors have been managing with scarce resources, decentralized systems subject to higher error, delays in reporting, and minimal redundancy and backup protection.
OPS will provide a 24/7 application that can be accessed in the office and on any mobile device with internet browser, automating much of the admin work for the users enabling them to focus on what really matters.
Not only this, OPS will incorporate a geo-referenced interactive knowledgebase to help municipalities deal with the encroaching issue that 70% of Water Operators are now only within 5-7 years of retirement and have few resources to transfer that knowledge into a format for the next generation of operators.
- Only 50% have reported efforts to train new operators, with the remaining
- 50% still not yet continuity planning in the years to come
- 60% of all operators have expressed a real concern that a gap will arise between the retiring and next generations.
OPS will solve this by providing an ability to allow the current generation to begin the process of inserting their information about all the components in their distribution systems into a geo-located database that will store specifications, photos taken from the field, and operator notes, building a chronological trail of how each component works and how it fits into the wider system. The next generation can then use this information as a decision support system while they are familiarizing with their roles by simply standing near a component.
Every application developed by OPS is cloud-based with encrypted connections and secure data storage, backup and redundancy protection. No knowledge will be lost and every stage in the process allows printable reports for physical storage & delivery whenever required.
We believe the solutions under development will even have worldwide advantages in supporting environmental monitoring initiatives, particularly in developing countries due to its cost-effectiveness
1Latest data available from EPA (2015): http://water.epa.gov/infrastructure/drinkingwater/pws/factoids.cfm
2,3,4,5Latest data available from EPA (2011): http://water.epa.gov/scitech/datait/databases/drink/sdwisfed/howtoaccessdata.cfm
6 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/40/part-141 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/40/part-142 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/40/part-143