New Orleans Mechanical to Digital

As the City of New Orleans water utility continued to recover from multiple hurricanes, it repowered new, large pumps to supply the city with reliable, treated fresh water and maintain water pressure during power interruptions. New Orleans officials contracted Stanley Consultants for design services to upgrade the existing pumps and their controls at the Claiborne Pump Station. This included performing a cost-benefit analysis, producing 100 percent plans and specifications, bidding and construction administration and inspection. The challenge was to design a retrofit system that took the utility from no automatic controls to a system that blended aspects of manual judgment calls appropriate to the older system, with a user-friendly digital control interface.