08-05-11 BPU RPT 07 - Laserfiche WebLink

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v: A 1 L k E N € R G Y 1 1 F 6. - RIVERSIDE PUBLIC UTILITIES Board Memorandum P U B L I C U T I L I T I E S BOARD OF PUBLIC UTILITIES DATE: August 5, 2011 ITEM NO: 7 SUBJECT: DATA MANAGEMENT SYSTEM AND INTEGRATION OF WATER QUALITY, OPERATIONS AND MAINTENANCE INFORMATION ISSUE: That the Board of Public Utilities consider approval of a Professional Services Agreement with Westin Engineering, Inc. for the development and implementation of a data management system to integrate water quality, operations and maintenance information into one database. RECOMMENDATION: That the Board of Public Utilities approve a Professional Services Agreement with Westin Engineering, Inc. of Rancho Cordova, Califomia in a not-to-exceed amount of$271,250. BACKGROUND: Riverside Public Utilities (RPU) produces over 62 millions of gallons of potable water each day for approximately 54,000 services, In order to accomplish this, the Water operations Division manages 64 wells, 39 booster stations, 16 reservoirs and three (3) major supply transmission mains. In addition, the Division monitors water quality, water pressures throughout the system, and water storage levels. This effort requires the collection, storage, analysis and reporting of thousands of bits of data daily. The existing processes for managing this vast amount of data are inefficient and impair decision making capability. For example, some of the data is gathered by hand and stored on written documents making this information difficult to retrieve and analyze. Some data is transcribed into a digital format, but each transcription increases the risk of data errors. The data that is stored electronically is placed into multiple formats (i.e. spreadsheets, SQL databases, Access databases, etc.) and is located in disparate locations with varying accessibilities, which makes data analysis cumbersome. To improve operational efficiency, proposals to lead staff through a change management process and ultimately develop a data organization structure based on the Division's operation requirements were solicited from consulting firms. Following this proposed planning process, an appropriate software solution can be selected. Ultimately, the solution will consolidate all the data acquisition and storage into a central database that is accessible by the appropriate staff. This model, using a consultant with expertise in department operations and Information Technology (IT) solutions, has been successfully employed in the past for technology implementation such as the Permits Plus development tracking solution and the Computer Information System (CIS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) conversions. Proposals were evaluated based on the proposers: 1) knowledge of water operation system processes; 2) knowledge and technical approach to database structure development; 3) experiences with similar projects; and 4) understanding and ability to address cyber security.