Do you own and operate a wastewater treatment system? Looking to reduce costs, deal with management or technical problems, or want to assess your operational effectiveness and develop an improvement plan? Are you considering benchmarking or contracting out the O&M of your wastewater treatment facilities? This site is geared to help.

.... Wiff Peterson

Elements in achieving lowest cost and highest efficiency from wastewater treatment systems include process control, energy conservation, staff organization, chemical optimization, and sludge systems optimization. These can be focused on singly or integrated within a comprehensive improvement effort. Practical optimization relies primarily on low-cost & non-capital improvements and O&M changes-opportunities which pay for themselves in one to five years .

If you’re looking to be the best, then benchmark against the best. For municipal wastewater operations the most competitive combination of cost and performance is typically achieved by private contract operations firms who must compete to win and renew O&M contracts frequently. The true benchmark for any wastewater system is a firm, fixed-price, competitive proposal for contract operation of the system. Sometimes this is not practical or desirable. It is certainly inappropriate to request proposals if there is no intention of selecting an operator and proceeding with a contract. For a municipality considering whether to contract out their O&M, it may be helpful to get an independent evaluation first of what techniques and approaches contract operations firms would likely use to improve operations and reduce costs. This increases options and may also be helpful in preparing an eventual RFP.

CPE's (Comprehensive Plant Evaluations) can be primarily technical in orientation (trouble- shooting focused) or primarily management in orientation (cost reduction and efficiency focused). Operator training needs to take operators beyond rote knowledge to practical application and confident decision-making. Coaching is an essential element. Coaching is also helpful in addressing practical management training needs and building a stronger supervisor/ management team.