News > Better Support Master Planning and Operational Analyses
Better Support Master Planning and Operational Analyses
22/12/2010
Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC), one of the largest water and wastewater utilities in the United States, has selected Bentley's WaterGEMS and SewerGEMS software. WaterGEMS enhances water distribution and modelling capabilities while SewerGEMS improves the modelling and management of sanitary sewer systems.
Together they enable the utility to better support master planning workflows and operational analyses, and to increase efficiencies and the accuracy of data delivery in workflows between WSSC and site developers in Prince George's and Montgomery counties, Maryland.
"Interacting with developers can be challenging, requiring frequent changes in specifications," said Richard Zambuni, Bentley global marketing director. "These are highly complex workflows, which previously required data to be manually re-entered before a new model could be generated to determine pipe sizes and the optimal network configuration. All of this takes time and can lead to costly input errors if not done carefully. When using its previous software to tackle complex projects, WSSC used to need as much as 120 days to perform hydraulic evaluations and furnish developers with pipe sizes, capacities, and the other hydraulic information needed to provide service to proposed developments. At the same time, WSSC had to perform other hydraulic reviews such as preliminary site-plan reviews, service category change requests reviews, county re-zoning reviews, private system connections reviews, water main replacements reviews, partial release reviews, and more. WaterGEMS and SewerGEMS will help WSSC work toward reducing the modeling process during these review processes."
Zambuni continued, "With WaterGEMS and SewerGEMS the WSSC management team is able to ensure consistent workflows and outputs. The software reduces the need for hard copies and is a better tool to exchange data with developers, especially when specifications change. Workflows will further improve due to the ability of WaterGEMS and SewerGEMS to work directly within Esri's ArcGIS, WSSC's enterprise GIS."
In a TEDx WWF session held in Geneva, Switzerland, Stuart Orr talked about water which is a solvable crisis. Stuart Orr is freshwater programme director for WWF International.