PACE Zenith Awards
Water & Wastewater category sponsored by Endress+Hauser Australia
Winner: SAGE Automation
Project: State Water iSMART (integrated Surveillance, Monitoring, Automation & Remote Telemetry) SCADA Upgrade Project
In April 2010, State Water released a tender to the market for the design and construction of a fully integrated SCADA System to support all aspects of State Water's delivery and management systems. SAGE provided a full set of electrical control system drawings. These included topology drawings and interconnection and schematic drawings.
SAGE undertook the programming of the SCADA system along with a design review phase which incorporated the production of detailed process function and specification on which the SCADA programming was based. This was a highly interactive stage with extensive input from the client to ensure that the end product met or exceeded operational and functional requirements and expectations.
The judges praised SAGE for the implementation of the SCADA project and the transfer of information and knowledge onto a large scale project.
"This project employed concurrent teams so that design, construct and commission stages could progress simultaneously. The client successfully transitioned to industry standard protocols and devices giving them vendor independence in the future."
The most difficult aspect that was encountered while installing the project was the large physical distances and remoteness of New South Wales said Paul Markwick, General Manger at SAGE Automation.
Paul Markwick (R) of SAGE Automation accepts the award from Endress+Hauser's Jason Jurgens, sponsor of the Water & Wastewater category.
State Water owns, maintains, manages and operates major infrastructure to deliver bulk water to approximately 6,300 licensed water users across the state's regulated rivers along with associated environmental flows.
It also manages an asset portfolio spanning 250,000 km, worth $3.5 billion and operates from regional centres throughout New South Wales which shows the scale of the project that SAGE was enlisted to do.
"One of the biggest challenges for us was obviously the remoteness of New South Wales – it's a big state and there were 60 sites that we had to get across. In order for us to do that we drew from resources from Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. To pull it together and work collaboratively without actually having to travel is a great achievement for us," said Markwick.
With this project, State Water now has the technical infrastructure in place to allow for the increasing needs of securing critical works into the future and a single interface to all of their state assets. This will allow them to add enhancements in the future and real time reporting to the business across the whole state.
Maintenance personnel also now have 24/7 access to a system that allows them to make business decisions based on the network as a whole. For example, someone 200 km downstream can make decisions based on a dam level upstream.
SAGE benefited from the experience as it developed enhanced business systems to handle a project of this scale. A team of 13 full time staff in three teams collaborated and worked on different areas of the project simultaneously. SAGE will employ this proven delivery model for large scale projects in the future.
Markwick added: "We're currently into the support phase of this project but we're looking at other possibilities with State Water. We're looking at other opportunities, to use lessons learnt from this project to benefit more of our customers and go on to win other projects."
PACE Zenith Awards 2012: Water & Wastewater category is proudly sponsored by Endress+Hauser Australia
Endress+Hauser Australia
t: 02 8877 7000