The Duncan City Council approved amendments to their project budget agreement with Tetra Tech to incorporate acoustic inspection technology. The Sewer Line Rapid Assessment Tool, or SL-RAT, has helped hundreds of utilities with establishing condition-based maintenance practices and better deploy sewer maintenance resources.
Read more here.
Prior to integrating acoustic inspection, New Castle County (DE) relied on a time-based preventative maintenance approach that had limitations. As New Castle operations service manager explains, “Our operators were coming back, some of them frustrated that every pipe they cleaned was running clear water. It’s frustrating when you know your resources are limited and you know you’re cleaning pipes that don’t need to be cleaned.”
The Sewer Line Rapid Assessment Tool helped the county to recognized that of the areas tested, 78% were in good condition, requiring no additional work. With this insight, New Castle’s maintenance program was able to direct CCTV and cleaning resources to the areas of greatest need, saving time, water and money.
Read the full article from Trenchless Technology here.
The City of Cocoa, FL integrated the Sewer Line Rapid Assessment Tool (SL-RAT) in February of 2017 to proactively scan their 200 miles of collections system for blockages. By utilizing acoustic inspection technology to quickly understand blockage conditions, they’ve been able to focus expensive cleaning resources on areas that need to be cleaned. The SL-RAT has helped in the development of Cocoa’s condition-based preventative maintenance program. Chris Collier, field operations manager of Cocoa describes the SL-RAT as a “game-changer in terms of operations.”
Green Bay’s Department of Public Works has reduced sewer backups by a drastic 94% since 2009 – from 267 reported backups in 2009 to just 13 in 2016. Improvements to their program have included integrating acoustic technology, which has helped them to gauze whether pipes are obstructed and need more expensive assets such as CCTVs or cleaning.
Reasons for sewer backups can be attributed to aging pipes, freezing and thawing of pipes, and roots that obstruct flow. The SL-RAT has allowed them to inspect a larger number of pipes and find troubles before they cause overflows.
“While our efforts to clean, inspect and televise are admirable, we’ve sought other technologies that might better utilize existing resources, and provide more timely assessment of our overall collection system. We believe we’ve found such technology with the SL-RAT or Sewer Line Rapid Assessment Tool.”
Bob Mitchard, Public Works Director of the Village of Algonquin, IL, describes the value of acoustic technology in a Committee of the Whole Meeting on March 13, 2018. Mitchard explains how the SL-RAT has helped their team transition to a condition-based assessment by showing where resources need to go. “While not a replacement for pipe cleaning, the acoustic approach can act as a precursor and focus energies where they need to be.”
InfoSense is pleased to announce that Walt Woodard has joined the company as the Global Sales Director. Walt has over 30 years of sales, management and business development experience in a variety of capital intensive industries. He has an MBA and a BS in Chemistry from Georgia Southern University. InfoSense CEO Alex Churchill said, “We are excited to bring Walt on board. His background and experience will help us accelerate the adoption of the SL-RAT® globally.”
The SL-RAT (Sewer Line Rapid Assessment Tool) is helping the Taupo District in New Zealand get a better understanding of pipe blockage conditions before allocating cleaning resources. The acoustic testing is helping the city to prevent sewer overflows before they happen. The SL-RAT is being used to discover and map out the trouble spots in the Taupo district according to Michael Cordell, the Water and Waste Asset Manager.
The SL-RAT (Sewer Line Rapid Assessment Tool) was featured in a local news report for Columbia, SC as an innovative tool the city is using to reduce sewer overflows. The Congaree Riverkeeper announced that such steps to improve the city’s maintenance program has allowed for vast improvements to river conditions – recording the lowest total volume of sewer spills in five years.
Municipal Sewer & Water Magazine’s article highlights how the town of Uxbridge, MA is efficiently managing their 40-mile wastewater collections system with only a crew of six, by incorporating the Sewer Line Rapid Assessment Tool (SL-RAT). Since initiating the SL-RAT acoustic inspection program in the summer of 2015, the Uxbridge Department of Public Works has screened over 25% of it’s collections systems, proficiently focusing cleaning and CCTV resources to the 5-10% of pipes that have significant problems. No sanitary sewer overflows have occurred since the acoustic inspection program was implemented.
“The [SL-RAT] is used as a first-line blockage screening tool to help the town avoid wasting effort cleaning clean pipe. “It is amazing how quickly it gives you good information at very low cost,” Legg says. Uxbridge crews the equipment with two people who frequently inspect 10,000 or more feet per day.”
Read more here.