2013-03-13 CC Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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,F..... teryt fe 1880 Wain Street, CenLervifle, 9KN55038 Estaffshed lt957 651- 429 -3232 or 9 651-429-8629 Memo to Council February 20, 2013 RE: SCADA System The City invested in a SCADA system to manage the water and sewer systems back in 2005. The acronym SCADA stands for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition. The primary purpose of SCADA is to monitor, control and alarm plant operating systems from a central location. In a municipal context, "plant" systems are typically water and wastewater facilities. The SCADA has a computer software component that dates to 2005 and runs on two PC's with the Microsoft XP operating system. Those computers, as well as the XP operating system are near the end of their useful life. The SCADA uses an outdated version of proprietary software called Wonderware. In fact the version of Wonderware that we are using will not even run on newer releases of XP, such as Service Pack 3. Thus, if a computer failed, we would need to find the earliest version of XP to run on a replacement. In order to update Wonderware to run on a new computer with new versions of Microsoft, the City would be required to pay a license fee of more than $7000 plus installation costs. Staff has explored SCADA control software and recommends changing to Cimplicity, a product of General Electric. It is a less costly alternative and has new features not present in the Wonderware update. They include alarm notifications by email or text message and establishing categories that may include critical and non - critical alarms. These categories would allow the city to reduce its overtime costs by relieving staff from responding to minor system issues that can wait until the next work day, but still notifying staff of the status of the equipment operations. At the same time, it will page out staff for critical system failures. The system also would document when notifications were sent and when they were responded to. The cost for the Cimplicity Plant Edition software license, including installation, would be $6897. This does not include the cost to replace the two computers that operate on the system. These would be replaced at the same time at a cost of about $2000. Paul Palzer recommends that the Council approve a contract with Savage Controls to make the change and that the cost be split equally between the Water Fund and the Sewer Fund. I agree with his recommendation. Dallas Larson, Administrator 17