During the dangerous winter storm in February 2021, the City of Tahoka's original SCADA system was damaged and completely knocked out. City officials and employees had no way to monitor their water system or even know if they had enough water to service Tahoka's citizens.
"From that point on, we were running everything manually," said Raymond Vega, Tahoka's Public Works Director.
Vega said city employees were manually turning pumps on and off every two hours to maintain pressure. He said his team used blow dryers to thaw out the frozen system.
"We had no clue where our levels were. We didn't know if our wells were pumping into our water tanks. No information. We were blind," said City Administrator Julie Arrington.
Along with the system physically not working, the City lost all of its data in the computer crash and it was not recoverable. City officials had a difficult time receiving help from the previous company, so Arrington began looking at other options.
And found SitePro.
"We called SitePro and SitePro came and helped us review and look into the situation with the original SCADA system. They helped us look into some of the problems," Arrington said.
SitePro worked with officials to build a system tailored directly to the city's needs. Water wells, pumps and storage tanks are currently being monitored and controlled. And rather than checking and controlling everything from the site, employees can control and monitor everything from a computer or mobile device.
Visibility
Data visibility and preservation was very important to officials after losing all of Tahoka's information in the crash. Tahoka officials can now view all of the city's data remotely and rest assured the information is safely stored in the Cloud.
"I've talked to several people," said SitePro Director of Quality Assurance Britt Wuensche. "First of all the engineer...he can look at all this data. He can look at trends of flow rates from his pumps."
City employees and engineers can also track flow rates at different times of the day to visualize usage.
"We take that data and we leverage it and we put it into our customer's regulatory reporting. So for a municipality, that's an H3. So basically water quality, how much water, how much chemicals are put in it. That type of stuff," Wuensche said.
Mobile App
Another asset Arrington and Vega both appreciate is the mobile app and remote capabilities. Officials can check alarms, view data, control equipment and more all from their phones or computers.
"That was more than we'd ever had. And it helped us to be more efficient and more effective with our water," Arrington said. "We can go home at night knowing that if there is an issue, we will be notified and we can see what the issue is on our phones without having to come into the office."
Vega said it saves him and his crew a lot of time and energy because they don't have to waste time visiting sites and checking meters. They can see how the system is operation on their mobile devices.
Remote Operations Center
The Remote Operations Center (ROC) is a unique feature offered by SitePro, and Tahoka city officials praised the assurance behind it. The ROC is located at SitePro's corporate office and provides a 24/7 remote operations support subscription service, with highly trained personnel continuously monitoring, evaluating, and adjusting customer assets from a centralized control room.
"I think that's one thing that sets us apart from our competitors is that we do offer a 24/7 Remote Operations Center. So we're constantly, we're actively checking alarms, alerts, tank levels, pump statuses and things like that," said Tanner Ogden, SitePro Sales Executive.
"It's a total upgrade from what we had," Vega said. "The feeling of going home knowing that somebody is watching it, you don't have to worry about it until the following morning when you come in to see what's going on...knowing it's being watched. It's being taken care of...that's a good feeling."