Arizona's Largest Water Provider

Quantum was selected to provide engineering, consulting, and assessment services of a process control system for one of Arizona's largest water providers. This system was designed and constructed in the late 1980’s as a turnkey system. The system consists of several pumping units and generating units that allows for adding water to, or removing water from a lake in Arizona. This system is critical to the overall delivery of fresh drinking water throughout the state of Arizona. The site's control hardware consisted of more than a dozen Allen-Bradley PLC-5® controllers, containing close to 100 racks of I/O modules for various instrumentation and was monitored by independent SCADA systems. This enormous and critical process control system was assessed by Quantum as a precursor to an anticipated automation upgrade.

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After a thorough assessment of the control system, Quantum provided a report detailing risks resulting from obsolescence of their PLC-5® platform. Quantum then provided consulting services to develop conversion strategies for eliminating both the discontinued hardware and software. Multiple meetings were organized with engineering staff and management to refine the potential conversion methods into one hardware and software upgrade strategy.

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With a conversion strategy selected to Allen-Bradley ControlLogix®, an anticipated phasing plan was developed. The phasing plan outlined the order in which the control system would be converted. A draft of the phasing plan was presented to the  engineering and operations departments. Feedback from these departments was critical and was included into an initial revision of the phasing plan. Based on the phasing plan and selected conversion strategy, an Opinion of Probable Construction Cost (OPCC) was developed. The engineering department then held a meeting with their project steering committee to discuss the assessment, consultation and project estimates provided by Quantum.