Background

Our client is a government department with key international interests and responsibilities. With a critical operational requirement for this particular site and employees, it is important to ensure the relevant preventive control measures to ensure the health and safety of all.

The site includes a data and control centre. Cooling for the building is critical for maintaining operations and consists of 4 cooling towers.

When we were first called in to survey this site, it was apparent that the cooling towers were in poor condition despite being relatively new. All 4 cooling towers showed heavy scale build up on the heat exchange surfaces. The existing treatment of the systems was poor, with erratic control of the primary

Contract Mobilisation

This site and its assets were added to our online electronic system for cooling tower water monitoring. This system is a reporting and data capture tool, which produces good quality reports and allows trend monitoring of all key parameters. Our client receives several benefits from using this online system including the immediate availability of reports, an online storage location for reports and automated alerts to key personnel. The advantage of using the online system means that we can work closely alongside our client and make the contract run smoothly and efficiently.

We made recommendations to the client for urgent improvement to the existing set-up and for further options for better long term control. After only a few months the improvements were apparent and the client agreed to the long term recommendations. This included new dosing and control equipment; the introduction of pre-treatment plant (water softener); a switch to solid chemical technology, which reduces manual handling, improves storage and transportation issues, reduces waste and reduces the carbon footprint of the site.

Contract Specification

Within this contract, we are responsible for the following tasks:

• Monthly visits to site to sample and analyse the cooling towers; inspect the fabric of the cooling towers; inspect and check the dosing and control equipment and pre-treatment plant
• Quarterly sampling for the presence of Legionella bacteria
• 6 monthly clean and disinfection of the cooling towers and storage tanks
• 6 monthly corrosion monitoring
• Annual servicing of the pre-treatment plant