The Jefferson County Environmental Services Department, based in Birmingham, Alabama, under the direction of the Jefferson County Commission and the County Manager, has the responsibility to collect, transport, and treat sanitary sewage in Jefferson County. It manages and operates 3,100 miles of sewer lines, 170 pumping stations, and 10 wastewater treatment plants throughout the region. The sewer system serves an estimated population of 480,000 residents with the potential to treat 199 million gallons of sewage per day. Their treatment plant SCADA systems had standardized SCADA hardware and software platforms that utilized CitectSCADA and Unity-based Modicon PLCs.
Jefferson County and Schneider Electric brought in Enterprise Automation to provide consulting services to help them define a plan to roll out programming standards into future automation projects.
The first step to developing the master plan was auditing all 10 of the Department’s wastewater treatment plants to understand what steps would be required to remediate them.
EA performed on-site audit and forensic investigation services to ascertain the condition of existing controls infrastructure and programming. Following the on-site investigation, engineers put together an audit report, gap analysis, and recommendations to provide Jefferson County management a feasible roadmap to rehabilitation, improvement, and standardization.
