Orange County Sanitation District automates maintenance and inspection workflows

The Orange County Sanitation District (OCSD) is a wastewater treatment facility that serves Orange County, California. It operates two plants: Plant No. 1 in Fountain Valley and Plant No. 2 in Huntington Beach. 

As the third-largest wastewater treatment facility west of the Mississippi River, OCSD serves an area of 463 square miles, home to 21 cities and a population of 2.6 million people. The district handles approximately 207 million gallons of water per day, processed through 579 miles of sewers, over 8,000 manholes, 15 pump stations, 2 treatment plants, and 5 miles of ocean outfall.

CHALLENGE

The community relies on OCSD to provide safe and efficient wastewater services, including the inspection of over 8,000 manholes. To streamline this process, OCSD sought a precise, reliable, and easy-to-deploy technology solution. This solution aimed to automate the manhole inspection process, eliminate paper-based data collection, and transition to a centralized GIS-based electronic repository for all manhole asset and maintenance records across the sewer network.

SOLUTION

Like many water and wastewater utilities around the world, OCSD has made a significant investment in an Esri ArcGIS® to map pipes and assets across its service area. 

Maintenance is an ongoing task that requires accurate data collection about the location of assets and the work performed on these facilities. Trimble® Unity™ helps with this challenge. As an authorized Esri business partner solution, Trimble Unity integrates Esri ArcGIS technology and allows utilities to view and update maps, assign work, manage workflows and collect field data and mapping updates using a variety of mobile devices. When used with a Trimble GNSS-capable device, workers can accurately locate and map assets in the field, helping to significantly improve the quality of infrastructure and asset management data. Trimble Unity can also be used with smartphones using iOS, Android and Windows 10.

The Orange County Sanitation District (OCSD) implemented Trimble® Unity™ software along with Trimble rugged Android mobile devices to automate utility manhole maintenance, mapping, and inspection. The Trimble Unity software provides a unified cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform with built-in applications to help water, wastewater, and stormwater utilities automate various critical field operations, regulatory compliance, and reporting activities.

BENEFITS

• Streamlined inspection processes and workflows 

• Easy capture and access photos and GPS positions

• Access to the real-time data

• Improved data accuracy