City of Santa Cruz, CA Selects Innovyze CapPlan Water

Innovyze_LogoBROOMFIELD, CO, Sep 2, 2014 – Innovyze, a leading global innovator of business analytics software and technologies for smart wet infrastructure, today announced that the City of Santa Cruz Water Department, California, has selected Innovyze CapPlan Water as its drinking water infrastructure management and risk assessment solution. The purchase equips the City with a full range of high-performance asset integrity modeling and condition assessment capabilities to help strengthen and optimize its water infrastructure and keep it operating efficiently well into the future.

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(picture from Innovyze website)

As the largest water agency in Santa Cruz County, the City Water Department has 24,300 connections, serving 90,000 customers. In addition to the City of Santa Cruz, it also serves the City of Capitola, the University of California at Santa Cruz and the unincorporated county areas of Carbonera Estates, Live Oak, the North Coast, Rolling Woods and Santa Cruz Gardens. The City’s distribution system contains some 300 miles of pipeline.

“CapPlan Water gives us the powerful asset condition assessment and integrity management tools we need to help us optimize rehabilitation and renewal planning for our water system,” said Doug Valby, P.E., associate civil engineer for Santa Cruz Water Department. “The software will help us refine our capital improvement plan to provide maximum benefit for the lowest cost and continue to best serve our customers.”

CapPlan Water changes the way water utilities plan the relative phasing of system improvements by allowing them to assess both the probability (likelihood) and consequence of failure for each asset. Assets that affect system operation will normally rate high on the consequence scale, while assets in poor condition will have a high probability of failure.

Probability (likelihood) of failure is determined based on the pipe’s physical condition (structural integrity, age, material, roughness factor, leakage/break/defect history) and location (proximity to a seismic fault or construction zone) as well as its hydraulic performance characteristics (head loss, pressure, velocity). Consequence of failure draws on data such as water outages (schools, hospitals, critical care facilities); low- and no-water conditions; reduced fire protection capabilities; flooding, including structural damage and impacts of chlorinated water in natural waterways; degradation of water quality; and other factors. Failure calculations can also be based on any GIS field using virtually any mathematical function, giving utilities the mission-critical ability to directly apply any custom-developed methodology to their capital planning processes. Outage, isolation, and fire flow criticality analyses as well as level of service calculations can also be directly considered. These important criticality parameters can be assessed based on any modeling scenarios, helping utilities further improve the reliability, integrity and sustainability of their systems.

CapPlan Water calculates the risk of each asset linearly (consequence score multiplied by probability score), using either a bi-directional distribution matrix or a more complex multi-criterion classification. This choice of calculation methods gives water utilities unprecedented flexibility in defining risk based on virtually any combination of supporting data. The greatest attention can then be given to water mains at highest risk. With this evaluation in hand, utilities can create fully prioritized short- and long-term water main rehabilitation, replacement, maintenance and management plans and develop sound, cost-effective capital programs to support them. The program’s intuitive interface; easy-to-use functionality; and rich analytical, graphing and reporting capabilities save utilities considerable resources. With minimal effort, users can quickly pinpoint assets at the greatest risk of hydraulic and water quality deficiencies or structural failure, identify the best possible improvement alternatives for optimal system performance, prioritize improvements based on available budget, and realize significant cost savings.

“Strategic asset management has become an imperative in today’s economy, and Innovyze has been an industry leader in business analytics applications since its founding,” said Paul F. Boulos, Ph.D., BCEEM, NAE, Hon.D.WRE, Dist.D.NE, F.ASCE, president, COO and chief technical officer of Innovyze. “The City of Santa Cruz Water Department’s decision to adopt CapPlan Water is a strong endorsement of the software’s power and its ability to assist utilities in returning their water systems to near-original condition and performance at minimum cost.”

About Innovyze

Innovyze is a leading global provider of wet infrastructure business analytics software solutions designed to meet the technological needs of water/wastewater utilities, government industries, and engineering organizations worldwide. Its clients include the majority of the largest UK, Australasian, East Asian and North American cities, foremost utilities on all five continents, and ENR top-rated design firms. With unparalleled expertise and offices in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, the Innovyze connected portfolio of best-in-class product lines empowers thousands of engineers to competitively plan, manage, design, protect, operate and sustain highly efficient and reliable infrastructure systems, and provides an enduring platform for customer success.

For more information, call Innovyze at +1 626-568-6868, or visit www.innovyze.com.

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