Building an enterprise framework for SCADA system for better results

Replacing a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system allowed California American Water to improve efficiency, compliance and reporting at a facility that had endured many challenges.

SCADA system insights

• California American Water’s Monterey facility transitioned to an industrial automation platform, improving supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system efficiency, scalability and mobile accessibility.
• A system integrator streamlined visualization using ISA-101 human-machine interface standards, enhancing alarm management and key performance indicator (KPI) monitoring while enabling mobile responsiveness for real-time system status updates.

California American Water found the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system at its Monterey, California, facility was consistently faulting and struggling to maintain the high standards required of a water utility, especially one in a “hydraulically challenged” area along California’s central coast.

With the help of system integrator Flexware Innovation, California American Water – Monterey was able to replace its legacy SCADA system with an industrial automation platform.

American Water Corp.’s relationship originated from a project to develop an enterprise framework for standardizing color scheming, symbol layouts, and faceplates between locations. Each American Water facility was previously responsible for its own visualization, resulting in a lack of consistency among locations, making remote troubleshooting efforts confusing and difficult.

To create this framework, the industrial automation platform software provided reusable templates and tag structures, and an unlimited licensing model meant American Water could implement the framework without needing to consider the individual size of each facility.

As the developer of the framework, the system integrator was the “gatekeeper” for each implementation. While some installations have been handled by other integrators, the system integrator vets any additions or modifications to ensure high quality.

“[American Water] tasked us with developing a SCADA platform that any SI can come in and use,” said TJ Holt, team lead at Flexware.

A large-scale SCADA implementation

For the Monterey implementation at Monterey, the system integrator worked closely with California American Water to migrate from a legacy SCADA system to a mature and mobile-friendly distributed system. The new system monitors and controls close to 130 remote sites, while providing key performance indicator (KPI) data to American Water’s enterprise portal.

The legacy SCADA system could not meet current operational needs, offering a clunky interface that required operators to drill down through multiple screens to view KPIs and excessive implementation time to add sensors or pumps.

Beyond its inefficient interface, the legacy system lacked the capability to upgrade to Industry 4.0 standards like mobile accessibility, advanced data analytics, and modern cybersecurity measures.

The sheer magnitude and scope of the facility made the idea of migrating to a new system a daunting task. The system encompasses over 120,000 tags, over 13,000 OPC tags and 140 programable logic controllers (PLCs) on one platform.

The unlimited licensing model, along with the flexibility and dynamism of the established framework, allowed the system integrator to rapidly scale out the solution despite the project’s size.

Streamlined visualization, modern HMI software design

Flexware also designed the system’s visualization following ISA-101 high-performance human-machine interface (HMI) standards, replacing the legacy system’s bright colors and inconsistent screens with streamlined grayscale to emphasize changes and alarms.

For navigation through the HMI, the system integrator took American Water’s existing structure and separated it by sub-area, then moved critical KPIs to page headers so parts of the system, like wells and tanks, could be constantly monitored.

The new HMI has been beneficial for California American Water’s alarm management. “Having this ISA-101 standard template is probably the best way to identify where those problems are before they actually become a real problem,” said Mike Grondin, SCADA manager for California American Water. In the legacy system, low-level alarm notifications tended to be lost in the overly colorful display.

To make alarm response easier, an in-application alarm dock aggregates all alarms and gives supervisors control of alarm severity. “Anybody at the supervisor level and above is able to make changes to what calls out, what alarm calls out, and what level of alarm it is,” Grondin said.

Simplified rosters also allow supervisors to easily toggle between the pump, treatment and wastewater groups to dictate alarm and schedule management.

SCADA on the go, mobile accessibly

One of the most critical features was mobile-responsiveness and accessibility. This was accomplished using a module in the industrial automation platform software allowing the system integrator to develop screens and templatized views that smoothly transition from desktop to tablet and mobile.

“The automatic scaling allows all different devices to be used,” Grondin said. “An operator can be sitting at the tank or a pump site and be able to view the active values of the site on their mobile phone without having to log in anything and be connected just about anywhere.”

Combined with the high-performance framework, these screens have enabled operators to quickly ascertain the status of the system, whether they are on the plant floor or traveling to a remote site.

The increased accessibility also solved another issue with the legacy system. “One of the problems we had previously was to view the SCADA system, it had to be in a secure network. One thing that we were able to do with the Ignition system is make a view-only that doesn’t go into the secure side,” Grondin said.

Seamless switchover, SCADA software migration

Flexware worked in the background because implementation did not require shutting down operations. Both systems were run in parallel until the legacy system could be shut down.

Installing the industrial automation system on the Stratus server “was virtually seamless.” The system integrator “had a link into where they could download the project onto the server. It was already preloaded with everything they needed,” Grondin said.

One critical aspect of migrating the system was adding devices and updating tag locations for programmable logic controllers (PLCs). The industrial automation software’s server-centric deployment and historian module made this easy, according to those involved.

“Add the location and it updates the SQL table and it automatically populates the navigation header in the SCADA app,” Holt said.

“The historian being integrated into the system also is a huge benefit. It’s a SQL base. So getting the information out and updating the new tag location is all integrated. So that doesn’t require any special programming or changes,” Grondin said.

Just like the installation, making changes to the system is designed to be simple. The way the industrial automation software “handles the upgrade is far superior than any other software I’ve touched before. It’s zero impact onto production, and there’s no gotchas,” Holt said.

Keeping up with trends in SCADA, industrial automation software

For operators, every system will have a learning curve, but to ease the transition, the system integrator moved certain gateway functions into the user interface (UI) itself. “The operators are able to create their own custom trends… They can export all of that data into a .CSV format and they can get [key performance indicator] KPI values in a report format for compliance reasons,” Holt said. “Everything is available to them through the UI.”

Generating reports with the legacy system had been a nuisance. The new system makes reporting immediate, with the option to log, download, and save reports and trends.

“The trending option allows those engineers to go in and grab the data for one point or multiple points for any time period that they need. Simply download, and then they can put in charts, [Microsoft] Excel, whatever they need to use it for, which takes a lot off of my plate,” Grondin said.

Paving the way

California American Water’s Monterey facility has a system that is scalable into the future, adheres to modern best practices and maintenance has been almost nonexistent.

“Once we’ve established the project, established all the tags, everything is talking. We have their views configured. It just runs,” Holt said.

Currently, 30 to 40 employees use the system at the Monterey facility and California American Water plans to implement Ignition in Southern California shortly, and Northern California after that. At the moment, everyone at American Water Corp. can view the system in read-only mode to see the results.

“Everybody can look in, even from the CEO down to the office clerk. So virtually thousands of employees could be using it,” Grondin said.

Holt applauded American Water’s urge to be the “forward thinkers” of the water/wastewater industry. “I really enjoy working with American Water. They have a lot of sites, they know they have a lot of data, and they want to do something with it,” Holt said. “It’s really great to be a part of a company who wants to put the money and capital towards this, to pave the way for other industries to follow.”

David Dudley is co-director of marketing at Inductive Automation. Edited by Chris Vavra, senior editor, Control Engineering, WTWH Media, [email protected].

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Keywords: SCADA, system integration, SCADA upgrades

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