MWH, now part of Stantec, Senior Principal Consultant Alec Erskine.
As a result of the 2014 Water Act and Ofwat, water companies up and down the country are increasingly studying how resilient they might be to stresses and strains, both now and in the future.
Senior Principal Consultant Alec Erskine believes ‘reliability engineering’ is the answer – the way to measure resilience and make more meaningful decisions.
In this Wet News article, Alec discusses how using standardised or observed rates of failure and calculating the chances of the rare simultaneous failures needed to cause system failure, we can arrive at an objective measure. This helps with many decisions including those difficult calls involving safeguarded systems. If the pump fails, the standby kicks in and there’s no consequence, so there’s no risk, so how can we justify replacing the pumps? Well, there is still system risk which will increase as the pumps age – and reliability engineering can quantify it.
Not only does reliability allow us to satisfy the requirements of the law but it may help us see where we have enough standby and where we need more. And that is a benefit worth chasing.
Read the full article published by Wet News here.
