During the early morning hours of Wednesday, July 12, 2017, the skies opened up in Racine, Wisconsin, and over seven inches of rain poured onto the ground for several hours. At the Racine wastewater facility, which is accountable for purification and disposal of sewage and wastewater from over 200,000 people before pouring them into Lake Michigan, all hands were on deck.
As a result of the flash storm, the facility was faced with 106 million gallons of water in a 12-hour period, three times more than its designed capacity flow of 36 million gallons per day. When dealing with such considerable storms, which happen a handful of times a year, all the machines in the facility have to work at 100 percent capacity—there is no room for error. When you hear the words “unsung heroes,” reliability engineers should be included on that list. It is through their efforts that systems like the one in Racine keep floodwaters and impact to life and limb minimized.
During a recent visit to the Racine WasteWater Utility plant, Keith Haas, the facility’s general manager, pointed out that the plant has had zero days of unplanned downtime since 1970. That’s zero incidents in over 45 years. Even more surprising is that most of the facility’s equipment, which largely consists of pumps, has been there since the 1970s, as well.
How do plant workers reconcile the aging equipment with 100 percent reliability and uptime? Through the use of advanced technologies that enable them to predict malfunctions before they occur.
