Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM), founded in 1956, provides drinking water, residual water, energy, gas and other services to residents of Medellin, Colombia as well as surrounding areas in the Antioquia Department and beyond. Its water network has 213 DMAs in 94 zones serving more than 4 million people.
THE CHALLENGE
As its network, infrastructure and staff grew over the years, so did the amount of data it was collecting. Handling visual information manually became more complex and time consuming. EPM’s field teams struggled to manage the many leak and asset failure events and mostly operated in reactive mode following consumers’ reports of water bursts. The utility needed a more efficient workflow for identifying and assigning such events, including better prioritisation and planning.
THE SOLUTION
EPM considered varied technologies and solutions and ultimately opted for analytics software. Following a successful pilot that produced good results, EPM chose the TaKaDu Central Event Management (CEM) solution, beginning in August 2019.
Initially, TaKaDu was introduced to a large group of key people within the organisation to raise awareness of it. Subsequently, specific users were identified and their roles and interactions with third parties were established. An efficient workflow was developed from there. No changes were required to EPM’s infrastructure in order to implement the TaKaDu CEM.
RESULTS
- A more holistic view of the water network and management
- Improved operational efficiency and more streamlined workflow
- Early detection of events reduces time and material costs for fixes, minimises collateral damage and water loss
- Better long-term planning
-Carlos Humberto Palacio Sierra, Head of the Water Losses and Wastewater Control Unit, EPMWe have greater control of the nightline across the entire system. Thanks to TaKaDu, we can now prioritise failure events according to the importance of the signals…the objective of having greater visibility at the time of making operational decisions has been achieved.
