Water Risk Management: Do You Know What You Need to Know?
Water risk management goes beyond drinking water safety. Facility water systems include cooling towers, boilers, filtration systems, potable water delivery, wastewater disposal, fire safety sprinklers, pipes, plumbing fixtures, and more. Traditional risk management is a continuous cycle of inspection, testing, recording, tracking, preventive maintenance, and emergency repair. With all this to manage and maintain, it’s a constant struggle to find and plug the literal and financial leaks potentially plaguing your property’s water system.
Successful water risk management protects life safety, optimizes system operations, and protects your capital investment. All of this relies on the quick identification and mitigation of system flaws — which relies, in turn, on real-time data.
Health and life safety
In the hierarchy of property management concerns, health and life safety is paramount. The highest standards of water risk management honor that priority and work first, to mitigate the safety risks inherent to water systems.
Bacteria growth and contamination is a common source of safety risk from water systems, and cooling towers are a common culprit. In a 2017 study of 196 cooling towers, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found 84% of them contained Legionella DNA. Legionella is the bacterial cause of Legionnaire’s Disease — a severe form of pneumonia of which the diagnosis of two or more patients is considered an outbreak, leaving little room for error when managing the risk.
Cooling towers tend to collect debris that contributes to the growth of microflora, but it is possible to lower the risk of Legionella contamination and maintain water quality with regular inspection and maintenance to repair mechanical deficiencies, consistent cleaning to remove dust and other debris, and removal of any areas of bacterial growth. Water treatment can control scale formation, maintain consistent pH levels, and establish a regular monitoring schedule for testing water quality. But sensor technology and real-time data collection can alert facility managers to system conditions before they pose a serious threat to health and safety — and your bottom line.
The water-energy nexus
Historically, water and energy systems were monitored and managed separately, but it is essential to recognize the inextricable link between water and energy. This interdependency is known as the “water-energy nexus.” The water-energy nexus proves that the less energy used to run a cooling system, the less water required to cool the building. As water quality improves, energy efficiency improves as well. This dual improvement is both an environmental and a financial win.
New regulatory requirements mandate monitoring of basic water quality. Traditional water treatment methods — which rely on monthly physical checkups and manual service logs — will meet monitoring requirements at their most basic level. But the complete story of a facility’s water quality and energy efficiency can only be achieved with real-time water system monitoring and management technology.
Outdated systems are a drain
Prioritizing capital investments is a challenge, and upgrading outdated systems often falls under the heading, “We’ll get to it when we get to it.” But the benefits of upgrading water management systems — hardware and software — are easier to see. Sensor technology integrated with a real-time, intuitive data access platform allows for data-driven decisions about water system upgrades, repair and maintenance priorities, and what — if any — water treatment strategies to deploy.
Financially, the benefits of real-time data access are extensive. Knowing precisely where usage fluctuations originate enables property managers to pinpoint causes and implement repairs before they become prohibitively expensive. Real-time data supports a consistent maintenance schedule which further helps in efforts to avoid expensive and unexpected repairs. Accurate, real-time water quality data is the best way to detect and ward off bacterial growth. And a system designed by water treatment experts, combined with the power of data, is proof positive of a commitment to life safety, environmental sustainability, and financial health and responsibility.
A water system management platform, like Symphony Software from Aquanomix, gives facility managers real-time monitoring, data visibility, and the Nexus Number—a single metric for benchmarking cooling system efficiency in terms of both energy and water usage. And all this data is at your property manager’s fingertips through an intuitive platform designed to integrate seamlessly with your existing systems.
Learn more about the benefits of real-time data to efficient water system risk management at aquanomix.com.