IMC-2018 Learning Session 38:21
by Neil Meyer and Matthew Mahoney, Central Contra Costa Sanitary District (Central San)
Central Contra Costa Sanitary District (Central San) is an organization providing wastewater collection and treatment for over 481,600 residents and 3,000 businesses in Contra Costa County. Central San's main facility is a treatment plant in Martinez, CA, processing an average of 32 million gallons per day of municipal wastewater and providing up to 3 million gallons per day of recycled water to a number of businesses in the community.
In 2013, Central San began developing a comprehensive Asset Management Program to better handle the treatment plant's aging infrastructure. This was a much-needed undertaking‚ with much of the plant built before 1980, plant operations faced challenges of equipment obsolescence, low efficiency, and poor reliability on a day-to-day basis. As the new Asset Management Program got underway, it became evident that effective maintenance would be critical to the program's success. To meet these maintenance needs, an improved maintenance strategy was developed, employing predictive, preventative, and reliability-centered approaches. Over the next 4 years, plant maintenance was overhauled with industry-leading techniques including automated maintenance reporting, oil analysis, equipment vibration analysis, and improved data management. Staff development became a renewed priority to ensure that operators and technicians would be given the knowledge and skills needed to achieve their goals and the goals of the plant to a high standard of quality and reliability. In addition, several measures were taken to improve accessibility of asset information for engineers, operators and maintenance staff, including implementation of a district-wide computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) and in-house development of a geographical data interface (GDI). Because of these initiatives, Central San has made tremendous gains in operational reliability and efficiency, allowing the organization to better achieve its principal aims: its vision, values and mission to protect public health and the environment.
