The nerve centre that manages and triages these is the Control Room, where a team of 20 engineers, specialists and technicians works 24 hours a day, seven days a week to monitor the water and wastewater networks.
Unitywater Control Room Manager, Craig Timms, said the Control Room team, located in Maroochydore, took an average of 4,000 phone calls each month from customers, community members and internal team members completing work across the network.
“There are a variety of jobs this team is responsible for, including responding to alarms at pumping stations, coordinating emergency repairs in the middle of the night, dispatching crews to investigate reported faults and supporting our field crews,” Mr Timms said.
“Our Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system provides a virtual, real-time view of the network, so between what we see in our system as well as the reports people call in, our team can support the vital public health and environmental outcomes the urban water cycle provides,” he said.
Mr Timms said Unitywater operations spanned water, wastewater and recycled water.
“Our water network stores fresh, clean drinking water in 103 water reservoirs before delivering it to homes and businesses through 6,553 kilometres of water mains with help from 74 pumping stations, to manage pressure and topography” he said.
“After the water has been used and is flushed down the toilet, washed down the sink or rinsed down the drain, it enters our wastewater network which consists of 6,357 kilometres of pipes, 802 pump stations and 17 wastewater treatment plants where it’s cleaned and disinfected before being safely returned to the environment or recycled for irrigation.”
“Our Control Room team members have diverse skillsets and experience - some with electrical, mechanical and civil engineering backgrounds, and others who have transitioned over from customer service roles,” Mr Timms said.
A recent example of this team jumping into action was their response to a significant broken water main in Narangba which had been damaged by a third party.
“This break had the potential to disrupt water supply to approximately 17,000 properties in the area and required a coordinated response,” he said.
“When a major incident occurs, there is more to it than just repairing a broken pipe. Our teams coordinate across the organisation and with specialist crews and contractors, other service providers, communicate with customers and stakeholders and ensure the job can be done safely while minimising disruption to our customers and the community.”
“In the Narangba incident, Unitywater’s crews were able to reconfigure the water network to ensure water kept flowing to these properties while more complex repairs were completed.”
Unitywater customers can call is 24/7 faults and emergencies line on 1300 086 489 to report water or wastewater issues or visit unitywater.com to report a fault online, sign up to receive outage information via SMS, or look at outages across the network.
