The City of Huntington Beach, California is a full service, predominantly residential city with a population of about 200,000 located in northwestern Orange County. The City owns and operates both the water utility and wastewater collection system serving its 200,000 citizens. Their assets include 27 sewer lift stations, 10 wells, 5 reservoirs, 16 flood stations, and 9 turnouts where imported water from MWD is resold to several local cities and agencies.
The City engaged EA through two consecutive, 3-year professional services agreements to provide as-needed SCADA integration and support to the City’s water utility department.
In 2014 the City faced the challenge of locating and retaining a local systems integrator with the qualifications, references, resources, and dedication needed to meet the immediate and future needs of a public entity providing water and wastewater utilities to customers in a growing metropolitan area.
Specifically, the City needed three forms of support: on-call support for their legacy system, planning and execution of projects, and assistance with planning their replacement SCADA system, including an Emergency Operations Center (EOC).
EA’s solution started with auditing existing assets, documenting pressing needs, and hardening the legacy system for improved reliability. The priority and most significant improvement was virtualizing the City’s 30 computer platforms, stratifying the SCADA networks, and isolating the water and wastewater Wonderware projects.
Upon completion, EA conducted preventative maintenance routines on a semi-annual basis, incorporating change requests for City operations as needed.
Concurrently, EA had workshops with the City to define their vision, preferred automation standards, and plan upgrade projects accordingly.
