Classified Ad Title:
Program Manager - Operational Optimization Program

Post Date
4/12/2017

Expiration Date
5/29/2017

Details:
The Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati (MSDGC) is seeking a Principal Engineer with exceptional program management skills and demonstrated success in strategy development and execution, developing and managing to KPIs, and effectively managing budget and schedule. Experience with wastewater utilities (preferably those under consent decree) is essential.

This person will be responsible for MSDGC’s wet weather Operational Optimization Program, one of the most innovative and crucial programs currently in place at the utility and housed in the Watershed Operations Division. The Operational Optimization Program is the mechanism by which MSDGC ensures that its wet weather assets are operated, and maintained to be operated, under dynamic and challenging wet weather conditions. It is also though this program that MSDGC demonstrates their capabilities in achieving consent decree mandates.

Responsibilities include the oversight of all development and support activities related to MSD’s Wet Weather SCADA system, a computerized tool built to monitor and remotely control wet weather assets. The Operational Optimization Program offers the best opportunities for MSDGC to reduce future WWIP spending. Since its inception in 2013, MSD’s Wet Weather SCADA system has been used to achieve an additional 400 MG average annual overflow reduction at a cost of approximately $0.01 per gallon. This person works closely with the division superintendent to develop and execute strategies that will advance the utility’s ability to optimize the conveyance and treatment capacity of the wastewater system during wet weather.

Background
The Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati (MSDGC) has one of the most challenging collection systems in the country to manage during wet weather as it contains more than 200 combined sewer overflow points. Together these overflows discharge over 11 billion gallons of sewage into the Ohio River and its tributaries during a typical year. The utility is under two consent decrees to reduce these overflows, with the cost of compliance exceeding 3.2 billion dollars. With sewer rate increases over the last ten years bringing the typical household’s bill close to the limits of affordability, MSDGC was driven to find new ways to address their wet weather challenges that were less costly.

In 2014 MSDGC began installing sensors throughout its largest watershed, adding secure cellular telemetry to its wet weather facilities, and tying the data together in a dedicated SCADA system for wet weather operations. By early 2016 MSDGC had gained both real-time visibility and control of its wastewater system in this watershed and transformed the wastewater collection system into a “smart sewers” network. To date, MSDGC’s Smart Sewer System covers over 150 square miles (approximately half) of its service area, incorporating 2 major treatment plants, 6 wet weather storage and treatment facilities, 4 major interceptor sewers, 164 overflow points, and 32 rain gauges and river level sites. Early benefits of the system have been achieved by maximizing storage, conveyance and treatment capacity of the wastewater system during wet weather. The system enables MSD to optimize the use of existing infrastructure in real-time so that fewer and smaller facilities need to be built in the future, reducing the capital investments needed to comply with the next phase of the consent decree. Remote monitoring has improved the maintenance of wet weather facilities and enabled upstream facilities to account for downstream interceptor conditions, increasing overflow capture during wet weather.

Several unanticipated benefits were also uncovered as treatment plant operators, having views previously only inside the plant, began ‘seeing’ the collection system for the first time. Upstream flow levels are used to generate flow projections that plant operators can use to bring equipment online and to adjust gates to take higher strength wastewater during periods of river intrusion. Further, specialized alerts generated by the system enable a large industrial customer to adjust their discharge of high strength waste during specified wet weather conditions, and has streamlined overflow detection and reporting efforts across the system.

A real-time window into the collection system during wet weather has exposed the extent of underutilization of interceptor sewers, since rainfall is often spatially varied. The upsizing of CSO underflow pipes and the addition of automated control gates that are integrated into the wet weather SCADA system are planned as future cost effective wet weather solutions.


Qualifications:
Job Listing



Employer:
Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati
Contact:
Bruce Ross

Address:
805 Central Avenue Suite 200
Cincinnati, Ohio, 45202


Work Phone:
513/352-2400

Email:
bruce.ross@cincinnati-oh.gov