Challenge. To address the increasing complexity and enhance the resiliency of the agency’s water supply management system through digital transformation.
Solution. Tampa Bay Water is Florida’s largest wholesale public water provider—delivering some 260 million gallons per day of drinking water to meet the needs of over 2.4 million residents in Hillsborough, Pasco, and Pinellas counties. Over the last 15 years, the agency has reduced its dependency on groundwater by adding capacity via a desalination plant and a surface water reservoir. The addition of these new water supply facilities has increased the complexity of the agency’s water supply management approach which demanded Tampa Bay Water to digitally transform. INTERA’s Alison Adams helped champion this transformation process through the development and implementation of a roadmap that ultimately led to developing a decision support system (DSS) for Tampa Bay Water’s source management and planning activities. The DSS is providing benefits that include:
- Increased efficiency in data gathering, storage, and retrieval and usage of data
- Improved operational reliability
- Enhanced data quality control/quality assurance processes that are reducing reporting errors and increasing staff efficiency
- Reduced costs associated with outsourcing professional services
- Improved employee knowledge and skills and increased knowledge retention
- Increased internal collaboration and team building
- Improved long range planning process
- Improved enterprise resiliency
Tampa Bay Water now employs an adaptive management approach for planning and operating their water supply facilities. The key feature of this approach is the use of feedback from operational decisions to planning decisions which leads to periodic re-evaluation of goals, objectives, needs, and actions. Tampa Bay Water’s DSS facilitates this source management strategy by providing information and knowledge in a more responsive and effective manner.
