Optimizing Maintenance Operations in the Water Supply Industry with Shepherd CMMS

Shepherd can help any company that deals with field maintenance. This broad scope can mean Shepherd becomes implicated in some pretty important sectors.

One of them is the water supply of London. This is not only a question of comfort and convenience to those that live and work there. It is also of strategic importance for various reasons, as it impacts both society and the economy in significant ways.

Virtually a strategic industry

The quality and quantity of the water supply can have a direct impact on public health playing a crucial role in sanitation and hygiene, which are essential for preventing the spread of diseases. Give a failed water supply a few days to take effect and watch London’s hospital admissions increase if this claim seems far fetched.
The water supply is equally crucial to many industries in London, including manufacturing, tourism, even agriculture as the grounds keepers of Kew Gardens can testify. Beyond this, a reliable water supply has a fundamental role in housing and construction in London and correct water management directly impacts local ecosystems, too.

For these reasons alone, the companies involved in making sure that supply and quality continue to function unaffected take on a very crucial part of this complex system.

High stakes

If things go wrong with the water supply they can be extensive, impactful and costly. Shepherd’s solution has helped clients plan and manage such events as failed ozone generators, (which are essential for disinfection of water supplies), or a failed power supply. Not only is the system not being treated as necessary for harmful microbes, an ozone leak can be harmful to people instead.

Supply interruptions also occur: treatment centers can stop working. There are redundancy systems in place to avoid interruptions, but these are not immune to problems and if both fail, the city concerned has major problems. This eventuality is one of the primary reasons for there being service level agreements with contract companies for response times, and why there are technicians who are on call on 24hr shifts in case the unexpected happens.

One of those on-call technicians may need to respond to a call-out at the drop of a hat. Equipped with the shepherd mobile app in their device, they can keep their head office apprised of the situation, day or night. Add to this making sure all parts used are logged the moment they are fitted to the faulty ozone generator, failed nitrogen boost system, malfunctioning ozone or oxygen monitor or compression and injection systems suffering a drop in pressure.

Prevention better than cure

Shepherd’s impact on maintaining a functional public service like water is not limited to the reactionary. Shepherd allows preventive and scheduled maintenance to be planned for, tracked or flagged if missed. Having those in place already reduces the need for that technician on a 24 hour shift to leap into action at 3 am on a weeknight.

This is, in fact, probably Shepherd’s greatest contribution to helping service providers working on the water mains systems of such organizations as Thames Water in the Greater London area: Preventive and scheduled maintenance, together with clear reporting of what has been done, when and by whom, are the surest way of avoiding problems, short of completely overhauling the entire network (which is, of course, unrealistic).

Shepherd does this in such a way that the labor and parts needed, the procedures followed, precautions taken, protocols followed and the costs incurred can all be gathered in one place.

If your company offers services to industries that have demanding needs, and where failure can become catastrophe, consider adding Shepherd to your solution portfolio. Ask for a demo today.