Operator rounds for water treatment plants
Your operators already walk the plant every shift. ShiftRounds puts that plant walkthrough on an iPhone, iPad or Android phone: every pump, filter, chemical feed and clearwell on the route, each reading checked against your own limits, and a report for the chief operator when the round is done.
A route to start from
Set up a drinking water plant and ShiftRounds starts it on a Day Round of 12 checkpoints, from the raw water pumps to the standby generator:
- RW-1 Raw Water Pump 1, in Intake (pump checklist)
- RWM Raw Water Meter, in Intake (meter checklist)
- CF-1 Coagulant Feed, in Chemical feed (chemical feed checklist)
- CF-2 Chlorine Feed, in Chemical feed (chemical feed checklist)
- SB-1 Sedimentation Basin 1, in Treatment (basin checklist)
- F-1 Filter 1, in Filters (filter checklist)
- F-2 Filter 2, in Filters (filter checklist)
- CFE Combined Filter Effluent, in Filters (turbidimeter checklist)
- CW-1 Clearwell, in High service (clearwell or tank checklist)
- HSP-1 High Service Pump 1, in High service (pump checklist)
- FM-1 Finished Water Meter, in High service (meter checklist)
- GEN-1 Standby Generator, in Electrical (generator checklist)
Rename them, add your own, and set the schedule and the limits in the console. Phones pick up each change the next time they have signal, with no app update. A route can also start from the operator rounds checklists for analyzers, UV systems, chlorine cylinders, storage tanks and more.
Readings checked as they’re typed
Free chlorine, turbidity, pH, pressures, levels and meters go in on a keypad built for gloves. Each reading is judged against the expected range and alarm limits you set, as it’s typed: out of range shows yellow, an alarm red, before it’s saved. Beside it are the last reading and the change since.
- A meter reads the way its dial does, and shows the flow since the last round in MGD (how meter readings turn into MGD).
- A pump’s pressure is asked only while it’s running.
- A leak check asks how bad, takes a note, and offers a photo.
Proof the round was walked
An NFC tag on each area, such as the intake door, shows the round reached it: the operator taps it on the way in, and the report marks each checkpoint there Tapped, or No tap with the operator’s reason. A checkpoint can have a tag of its own.
Where your plant compares the field with SCADA, the operator types what the SCADA screen shows, and the sign turns yellow where the two disagree. The report lists every item checked against SCADA.
No signal in the pump room
The whole round works with the phone in airplane mode. Every reading is saved on the phone as it’s taken and sent once there’s a connection, minutes or hours later, with the time it was taken. A shared control-room tablet shows a roster, and each operator unlocks it with their own PIN, so every reading says who took it.
Who hears about it
- Each round’s report is emailed to the people you choose when it reaches the server.
- A leak or a critical finding goes to the chief operator and supervisors as soon as it arrives.
- A round that isn’t submitted by its shift’s due time sends an overdue alert.
- A leak or a fault opens an issue that a supervisor assigns and closes.
Every reading builds a trend, and every record carries who took it and when. Export downloads the readings as a spreadsheet, with each meter’s daily flow for the monthly operating report. How your data is kept safe
Tank levels in ChemLevel
A utility that also runs ChemLevel can connect the two. Then a chemical tank level or a chlorine cylinder’s weight read on a round is logged in ChemLevel too, and nobody types it in twice.