IMC-2018 - 43:36
by Neil Meyer and Matthew Mahoney
Central Contra Costa Sanitary District (Central San) provides wastewater collection and treatment for approximately 481,600 residents and 3,000 businesses in Contra Costa County. Central San's main facility is a treatment plant in Martinez, California, 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 businesses in the community.
In 2013, Central San began developing a comprehensive Asset Management Program to better handle the treatment plant's aging infrastructure. Plant Operations faced challenges of equipment obsolescence, efficiency, and reliability issues on a routine 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 five years, Plant Maintenance was overhauled with industry-leading techniques, including automated maintenance reporting, oil analysis, equipment vibration analysis, and improved data management. The Program was framed around a strategy utilizing the deployment of Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM), preventative maintenance optimization, defect elimination and root cause analysis. 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 treatment 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 Central San's Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) and in-house development of a Geographical Data Interface (GDI). Another crucial element was increasing maintenance staff's engagement in all phases of the asset life cycle to assure equipment maintainability and reliability. It became essential for Plant Maintenance to provide support in the planning, design, and construction phase of Central San's capital projects. Because of these initiatives, Central San has made tremendous gains in operational reliability and efficiency, allowing the organization to achieve the principal aim of its Mission and Vision.
