UAE Water Sustainability

Water management, collection and treatment is a complex and intensive task, which draws on a vast amount of heavy infrastructure and assets, all of which need to be maintained efficiently and effectively to ensure optimal performance. Furthermore, in a country with limited rainfall and high demand for water in UAE, RAKWA was under pressure to treat as much wastewater as possible in the interests of sustainability.

One of the key challenges that RAKWA faced was managing and keeping track of the maintenance of its assets, and particularly in ensuring that the quality of maintenance was uniformly high across all of its operations, including capital assets such as pumps, motors and pipes. Furthermore, with so many assets to keep track of, it was difficult for the Operations and Maintenance (O&M) department to have clear oversight of exactly where it should direct its maintenance resources. This led to reactive rather than pro-active maintenance, which meant that problems were often being fixed after they arose, rather than before. This approach led to higher maintenance costs, increased downtime and reduced efficiency.

RAKWA was keen to enhance the system and hired experts with the right skills to transform the maintenance function of the operations to increase its efficiency, capacity, and to modernize the systems through automation and digitalization.

Walid Abdulrehman Mohammed, O&M department manager, RAK Wastewater, joined the organization in early 2017, and saw the need for a comprehensive means of monitoring and managing RAKWA’s assets, to help shift the maintenance from reactive to pro-active, and to enable the organization to make far better use of its resources. “The biggest challenge we used to have was the efficient utilization of man hours and also the accuracy of the operational data which actually affects your decision-making processes,” he said. “The data available about the assets was not accurate and not sufficient to conduct a proper assessment.”

After assessing a number of Enterprise Asset Management solutions from different vendors, the O&M department decided to implement Infor EAM. They chose the system over solutions from rival vendors due to its specific suitability for utilities, and especially wastewater operations.