AWWOA Water Week Conference 2019

Every facility will have to incorporate some degree of retrofit or upgrade during its life cycle. As it is rarely feasible to demolish and rebuild existing systems in their entirety, commissioning existing facilities is inevitable and incorporates additional risks associated with manipulation of running systems that are often critical. Water and wastewater owners, operators, engineers and technicians have all had their share of experiences, good and bad, related to commissioning processes. Additionally, all have had further layers of complexity imposed on implementing the same during normal operation. In the end, these systems all become operational, but there is a notable difference in the overall success of a project based upon approaches, roles and responsibilities, coordination, understanding of inter-dependencies, and sequence of events. In addition to discussing methods to optimize commissioning on existing facilities, this presentation will provide a case study on commissioning of the Mayerthorpe water distribution system upgrades in order to demonstrate challenges, risks, and disaster avoidance on a running water distribution system and water treatment plant.

Key points will discuss:
• Definition of commissioning and surrounding phases.
• Typical stakeholders involved in the commissioning process.
• Roles and responsibilities.
• Feasible commissioning plans.
• Extent of backup systems.
• Dealing with the never ending “what if’s”.
• Common pitfalls, concessions and shortcuts experienced.
• Examination of some alternative commissioning methods and discussion of how they address the items above.
• Systems optomizations.