Water/wastewater industry experience

I'm looking at a new position for essentially an integrator in the water/wastewater industry, and I was wondering if anyone would like to share their experience as a controls engineer or PLC programmer in this industry. I'm coming from a manufacturing background working with plcs for many different processes, servos, sensors of all kinds, database programming etc.

Not so worried about if I could do the job, but wondering if anyone has made a similar transition and what their experience was like, I.e. which did you like better, what is iuuunteredting about it, etc.

Thanks!

I did it a little over a year ago. It is different. The processes are very simple for the most part. I have not done a whole lot with wastewater, but a few projects here and there. I have very little knowledge of the chemistry side of things.

My impressions here in Oklahoma compared to manufacturing:
1) Nobody has any money. Bids are somewhat competitive. Many of the existing stuff is using the cheapest available touchscreen, PLC, computer, software.
2) All the infrastructure is in dire need of updating and repairs.
3) Almost none of our customers have any in-house electrical or programming skill.
4) Radio telemetry is a new skill I needed.
5) Everyone uses a different brand of radio modem.
6) Many of the sensor brands I was used to seeing are nowhere to be found. Seems the water-world has its own favorites and many of them are very good and somewhat specialized.
7) I am very grateful for my water well at home, and I now will drink bottled water over tap water in most towns when away from home.
8) If you are good with PLCs and making them communicate with each other, you will be a hero and in high demand. I could work 80 hour weeks until July just to catch up on the projects we have pending.
9) Generally speaking, you have plenty of time ...too much... to wait to see the effects of your changes. In discrete manufacturing, I used to keep my finger on the mouse to "Untest Edits" in case something went wrong. Now, it can be hours before a pump is called to run to find out if I have all my ducks in a row. If my start and stop commands take ten seconds to actually happen, that is no big deal.
10) Even though nobody has any money, when people can't get water, money magically appears so there is plenty to be made.
11) I spend as much time driving as I do working. It used to bug me that I had to drive four hours to work two, then drive four more. But I made a conscious effort to focus on the fact that I am getting paid to drive a brand new truck all over the state (and beyond) listening to the radio.
12) E-stop circuits are becoming a memory. No more complicated safety relays or controllers. There are new dangers like gaseous chlorine, but I don't have to worry nearly as much about some of the things I used to run across in factories that could maim and kill.

OkiePC said:

7) I am very grateful for my water well at home, and I now will drink bottled water over tap water in most towns when away from home.

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I just spit out my coffee laughing so hard.

It's like when I walk out of about half the places I work at and wonder why the stuff they make works at all.

Dan

OkiePC said:

9) Generally speaking, you have plenty of time ...too much... to wait to see the effects of your changes. In discrete manufacturing, I used to keep my finger on the mouse to "Untest Edits" in case something went wrong. Now, it can be hours before a pump is called to run to find out if I have all my ducks in a row. If my start and stop commands take ten seconds to actually happen, that is no big deal

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Something I never would have thought about until I got into it, but that makes total sense, and I definitely can relate to the finger on the "untest edits" button. Thanks for the thorough response.

One of my primary responsibilities is the care and feeding of a Purified Water generation and distribution system. Not strictly what you are looking at, but there are a lot of similarities. It's all about sensors. Quality parameters, flow, level, pressure, etc. So if you have a ton of sensors, you now have a ton of data. Eventually, if not immediately, someone is going to want or need to see trending, or historical data. Depending on the regulatory body they answer to, this data may need to be in a format that is compliant with regulations. You may need to make this data available at a location far from where the sensor or controller reside. Familiarize yourself with pump speed control, level sensng, and inline measurement technologies. Conductivity sensors, pH sensors, TOC sensors, ORP sensors, Chlorine sensors, etc. Stuff like equipment runtime balancing, varying load response is prevalent too.

OkiePC said:

7) I am very grateful for my water well at home, and I now will drink bottled water over tap water in most towns when away from home

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I work with a technician that decided to move to Seattle and get a job with Boeing, only to discover his years of experience were not even good enough to hire in as an apprentice there.

He got a job at a water bottling plant and called me that night excited (agitated?) asking if I knew what they were putting in their water bottles. I guessed that they opened a garden hose connected to their incoming water system, hopefully filtered it at least, and filled their bottles. Turns out I was right.

And I just checked - both Pepsi Bottling Group and Coca Cola have bottling plants in Flint, Michigan. So guess what they are bottling, and carbonating for all their pop.

Edit: Add American Bottling in Flint for 7-Up products.

There was a small bottling plant who called us to check out their RO. Turns out they were bottling concentrate (salty reject water). I was not in on that service call, but my partner said when he asked them about conductivity readings, he was met with a blank stare.

Most of them at least run the tap water through a charcoal filter.

I've been in wastewater for a bit (since 1977, actually) and one thing I never experienced was boredom. I have done quite a bit in water as well, but about 75% of my work was wastewater.

If you do it right the field is complex - it combines mechanical (pumps & valves) biological (the secondary process) chemical (precipitation, pH) physics (settling, aeration) electrical (I&C, motor control) politics (well, duh) and more.

If your integrator is a specialist in the field it will be a great career. If he is one of those guys trying it out because there isn't enough factory work, run hard. It is not an industry kind to the faint of heart or the "semi-expert". The PLC and instrumentation stuff is the easy part - knowing the process and the equipment is challenging.

- You will almost always get paid, and it will almost always be late.
- Be on the lookout for liquidated damages, whether you deserve them or not. You will be the last guy on site for commissioning, and the contractor will be looking for someone, anyone, to eat his screw ups for the last year and a half.
- Unlike industrial control, long process lag times and long distances between device and process equipment are the norm.
- It is an incredibly risk averse business. That applies to everyone, but especially to the consulting engineers that are theoretically responsible for design.
- Be prepared for high levels of incompetence by the contractors and engineers. Many of the contractors are not specialists, and damn few of the engineers understand anything with wires.
- Take the long view - "concession for future sales" should be a big part of your vocabulary.
- The plant operators are generally very dedicated, very knowledgeable, and very unappreciated. Make them your allies.

- There are about 16,000 treatment plants in the US, only counting those that discharge to surface waters, and not counting industrial pre-treatment facilities that discharge to sewer. Not one of them is moving to China.

I could go on .......

Water Wastewater has been pretty good to me. I started as a Co tractor E&I and I would say I am one of the few specialists at that and then moved my way up. Everything OkiePC and Tom say is good advice.

Especially the No money thing. They Cheap out but expect you to work miracles with the equipment in Programming. In fact that is why I first seen a DL06 from automation direct

One downside to this industry that I have found is that working in a lift station until you get used to the smell is dangerous. Anyway if you forget about where you were and go out in public without a long shower and change of cloths. And be careful where you park or your vehicle will carry it for a long time too.

RussB said:

One downside to this industry that I have found is that working in a lift station until you get used to the smell is dangerous. Anyway if you forget about where you were and go out in public without a long shower and change of cloths. And be careful where you park or your vehicle will carry it for a long time too.

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If you work i the industry long enough you will get the s$%$^t shower.

Listen to Tom.

I always have with me a duffle bag with a complete change of clothes, including shoes, and towel, washcloths, soap, shampoo, eyewash, skin lotion, etc. (even toothpaste, brush and mouthwash)

Been there. Done that.

And usually because some idiot says "oh, this needs to be kept running" and does something before you can tell him not to, and there's no E-Stop close by.

Thanks again for all the helpful responses. I have a much clearer picture of what to expect now. You guys are awesome!

I worked for an integrator that was primarily water and wastewater from 1993 to 2002. Our work was about a 50-50 split. Our sales group was also a manufacturer's rep for process equipment and instrumentation so they worked with engineering firms to get good control system specs written. We started with IDEC then switched to Modicon Compact 984, with some A-B SLC-500 when specified. One system in the California wine country had a PLC-5/40 in a hot standby configuration.

Some random thoughts:

My motto, arrived at while standing on top of a wastewater aeration basin: "I hate the smell of sewage in the morning! It smells like c***!" Meanwhile, my control system was keeping the dissolved oxygen at an optimum 2.5ppm and the bugs were doing their thing to remove >99% of the nitrogen.

As others have said, it's a low bid business with no lack of idiots at all levels. Sometimes the cheap hardware cost more than it saved in unbudgeted programming time to make some needed feature work. At one project, we agreed that the electrical foreman was a good man for putting lights in a supermarket. He certainly didn't understand instrument wiring and shielded pairs.

For slow communications, I don't think anything beat Bristol-Babcock's DPC3300 system. I once saw a pump station three network hops away from the plant take three minutes to respond to a pump start command and another three minutes to return a running status.

There is still a lot of very old infrastructure out there. Buffalo, NY, takes it all the way to historic: Colonel Ward Pumping Station.

One trip puts you in a resort area. The next sends you to a site so remote that there isn't even a bad diner nearby for lunch. After that you're outside the walls of a maximum security prison.

Good luck,

Mike

I was 20 years in manufacturing as a Controls Engineer and Electrical Engineer, as well as Area Maintenance manager, which included maintaining our Effluent Plant.

When I got paid off, I went to work for an Engineering Consultant who specialised in working for various UK and Irish water companies (clean and waste water).

First main job they gave me was to help complete installation and commission the new Siemens PLCs with Profibus on a Clean Water plant, integrating into other systems. I had to learn Profibus pretty quickly )(on my own) to teach the contractors how to terminate correctly, I had to help the System Integrator with Siemens S7 software and WinCC, although I had never dealt with any of these, never mind not knowing the water processes.
Thankfully the Project Engineer was a long-term friend, and he had faith in me to dig him out the deep hole the project was in, and get it commissioned for him on time.
Very interesting 6 months, and I was also asked to find 6 other commissioning engineers, as the investment cycle was coming to an end, so many projects were coming to completion....

From manufacturing to water?
1) yes, learn telemetry, the department I joined were telemetry engineers.
2) timescales for projects are rarely kept, except when they need clean water to supply the public, then you have small window before they run out.
3) budgets and scope for projects grow arms and legs, when various people get involved, and their demands are added.
4) Yes, operators drink bottled water.
5) if working on site, expect to bring your own food/tea/coffee and portaloo, only the bigger sites have welfare facilities
6) as a control engineer, invest in a laptop table and stool. Most switchrooms have no tables nor seats.
7) have 2 sets of PPE - one for clean water and one for waste, and a change of clothes and wet wipes/disinfectant for washing before you leave site.
8) Expect to travel to remote places. Get a satnav. In Scotland, I was given a database for my TomTom Satnav to find the remote pumping stations, as the Postcode covered a few miles, so that was no use.
9) Be prepared to hang around. Operators will be there to unlock doors etc when they get there, and they finish early.

I did enjoy most of the work, once you realise that the pace is slower, the equipment is aged and needs investment to modernise, then you just get on with it.
I lasted 5 years, as I finally got fed up with writing reports for project proposals, and they disappeared only to surface some time later.
I was in a consultancy, not a system integrator, and this is the UK.

I am now back in manufacturing.........the pace is faster, I am expected to multitask,, but as a control engineer, I have more say on what we can do.