Category: Users

Boston Water and Sewer Commission Now a FlowWorks User

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Boston Water and Sewer Commission (BWSC, the Commission) has selected FlowWorks to help pull their data together across different management platforms and to better understand stormwater and flood events.  The FlowWorks platform allows BWSC to investigate the dynamics of rainfall, trunk flow and level, and pressure fluctuations in real time to better understand the causes of basin flooding.

In addition, FlowWorks is also pleased to be working with Flow Assessment Services out of Bedford, NH.  Flow Assessment provides flow-monitoring services to BWSC under contract, and will be performing all data acquisition field services and QA/QC for the project.

FlowWorks is working with Paul Keohan, Project Manager at the Commission, to improve access to data being collected around Boston.  Recently, the Commission expanded the collection of rainfall data to better understand the distribution of rain across the city.  Under a separate project, the Commission is measuring water depths and velocities.  FlowWorks makes it possible to integrate the data from both of these projects into one platform that the Commission can access outside of the normal working hours.

According to Paul Keohan, being able to access rainfall and depths during a large storm, rather than using rainfall forecasts, will improve the Commission’s ability to monitor the collection system and determine if corrective measures are needed to prevent flooding

Coming Soon – Important New Changes to the Work Screen

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One of the changes most often requested by FlowWorks users is a smaller, cleaner and less obtrusive menu interface at the work screen – the screen behind the login. The idea is to make better use of valuable screen real estate to allow users more room to do their actual work. We heard you: we have a new interface coming that will do all this and more!

The current FlowWorks menu system takes up a large portion of the screen area above and around the work screen itself. As viewed here, you can see that about a third of the screen is taken up by menu items and unused white space.

In the new format, we have condensed and compacted the menu bar and menu items into something much more screen friendly. Looking at the mock-up below, you can see a new header and menu bar that have been reduced to about a third of their current size.

Other more subtle changes to the side bars and other elements are also visible, all intended to maximize the work screen area.  In addition, we have also adding a bread-crumb trail to make it easier to navigate around the back end.  As part of the makeover, we will introduce a new button at the right of the menu bar designed to take users directly to the FlowWorks Support Center – our new central location to report, monitor, and solve all user support requests.

The new interface will make it even easier to manage, edit, and analyze data in FlowWorks. This is another example of how requests from our users help us make FlowWorks a better platform for everyone.  Thank you, from all of FlowWorks.

Introducing the New FlowWorks Support Center

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We are pleased to announce the new FlowWorks Support Center.  The FlowWorks Support Center is a new interface designed to allow us to better serve users by creating a single, central location to report, monitor and solve all support requests.  The FlowWorks Support Center provides an easy interface through which to submit feature requests, bug reports, and other help ticket items. The Support Center also provides a quick link of all of our training, troubleshooting and “how-to” posts and videos complete with an easy-to-access menu.

The FlowWorks Support Center is accessible by clicking on the Support link once you are logged in to FlowWorks. This will take you to the Support Center Main Page where you can submit help requests, suggest new features, or simply read up on how to perform an I&I analysis.

This and many more changes are coming to FlowWorks shortly – all designed to allow you to work easily and more efficiently.  The power of FlowWorks.

FlowWorks Welcomes Cincinnati

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The city of Cincinnati is the latest municipality to join FlowWorks. The city is beginning the process of moving all environmental monitoring data to the FlowWorks web platform where it will be securely stored, edited, analyzed and turned into actionable information.

In the fall of 2010, when ADS Environmental Services was bidding flow monitoring services to Cincinnati they asked FlowWorks to team with them for data management. ADS knew from their successful partnership for Seattle that FlowWorks would help them deliver superior quality data and save time and money in the process.

ADS was successful and Cincinnati awarded contracts to provide flow services for capital improvement and other modeling projects. At present, this includes flow servicing, data management and QA/QC for over 200 monitoring stations. The data is being uploaded directly to FlowWorks, where it will be combined with other Cincinnati environmental data including historic flow metering stations, rain gauges, SCADA pump stations, and CSO/SSO sites.

Check back soon for more information including how FlowWorks is helping Cincinnati and other municipalities worldwide achieve the most efficient and comprehensive flow monitoring possible.

FlowWorks in the UK

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FlowWorks Team Makes a Splash at the WaPUG Autumn Conference

The FlowWorks team is home after a successful trip to the United Kingdom for the Wastewater Planning Users Group (WaPUG) conference.

The primary topic for discussion during the two-day wastewater and urban drainage event in Blackpool was “What does the future hold—the next five years.”

FlowWorks President Timothy Hicks flew into the UK a few days ahead of time for meetings and to attend the Water, Wastewater and Environmental Monitoring (WWEM) tradeshow in Telford before picking up FlowWorks Operations Manager Craig Kipkie at the Manchester Airport. The English roads made for adventure as the two missed the turn onto the M6 and found themselves traversing the rural roads of the Wirral. After some hasty map reading, they made it through the Mersey Tunnel and onto the streets of Liverpool, where they were able to locate an excellent pub set against the back wall of Goodison park. Once they were fed, it made for a fun and scenic excursion, Hicks said.

Safe and sound in Blackpool, the FlowWorks team met up with colleagues from Detectronic and IETG, owned by ADS, the firm’s partner in the Seattle Public Utilities Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) project. There was much discussion about upcoming projects and plans for using FlowWorks.

Hicks and Kipkie led numerous demonstrations, including what was easily the largest demonstration of the show Thursday evening when they shared online data, live via the FlowWorks site, to a crowd of about 20. The team continued to offer demonstrations and answer questions even as the show was being cleaned up around them on the last day.

Craig Kipkie demonstrates how to use FlowWorks data analysis tools on live field data.

Craig Kipkie demonstrates how to use FlowWorks data analysis tools on live field data.

The team also spent time with Detectronic and IETG folks, teaching them the inner workings of the FlowWorks platform—so much so that both firms have been designated as FlowWorks Technical Experts since they now possess a depth of knowledge about the tools and how to effectively employ them.

“All in all, it was a fabulous trade show,” Hicks said. “Three days of really good conference.”

The tradeshow was a unique opportunity to connect with the UK market. The market is highly sophisticated, since the level of modeling going on nationwide is uniformly high and very different from that of the United States because it is operated by ten large, privatized water boards. The result is that all firms in the industry are working ultimately for one or more of the ten water boards.

Craig Kipkie of FlowWorks and Ian Small of Mott MacDonald discuss the details of FlowWorks CSO management tools.

Craig Kipkie of FlowWorks and Ian Small of Mott MacDonald discuss the details of FlowWorks CSO management tools.

Hicks highlighted plenty of positives, weather aside, and thoroughly enjoyed the trip, he said,

“We had a really great show and met exactly the people we needed to meet and had great conversations and demonstrations with many of them. The people were awesome, the food was great, the venue was good for the purpose, Blackpool was marginally acceptable and the weather was awful. Short of fixing the weather and attracting so many more of the RIGHT kind of attendees that the event outgrows Blackpool, I am not sure the organizers could have done anything more”

Look for FlowWorks at the WaPUG Conference again next year.