How does outsourcing apply to water or wastewater treatment?
Often called “own-operate” or “build-own-operate”, this describes installations owned and maintained by the service provider, with the equipment installed in your facility or in trailer(s) adjacent to your facility. Your company is typically billed monthly at a flat rate per thousand gallons of water treated. Contracts typically range from thirty-six to sixty months but may extend up to ten years.
Why Outsource Water or Wastewater Treatment?
No Capital Expenditure
Are undersized or outdated facilities or equipment slowing your production processes? Are you repeatedly delaying improvements and upgrades because capital budget requests are turned down? Critical support facilities such as water or wastewater plants, cooling towers and similar utilities which are undersized, inefficiently operated or which use outdated technologies may bottleneck operations and reduce profitability. Outsourcing allows you to solve the problem without capital budgeting or capital spending.
Time and Expense
Has downsizing resulted in too many repair orders and too few qualified operators or mechanics? Has employee turnover made it difficult to operate and maintain your water or wastewater treatment equipment? Is it easier to get operational money than added head count? Over the past decade, this has led many companies to utilize outside vendors to own and operate the water and / or wastewater equipment, allowing plant personnel to concentrate all their resources on manufacturing and delivering product.
Rapid Installation and Implementation
Have you experienced the hassles of major process installation or rehab? Purchasing a water or wastewater treatment facility or equipment initially requires water analyses, technology evaluation, engineering study, scope development, capital budgeting, vendor evaluation, proposal requests, proposal evaluation, and vendor selection. Assuming capital budget requests are approved, follow-up includes final design work, equipment fabrication, equipment inspection and acceptance, environmental permitting, field installation, startup and process optimization. Do you or your staff have the time and resources to devote to this? Outsourcing can eliminate many of these tasks and equipment can often be onsite and operating within 8 to 16 weeks. Temporary, mobile processes are available for temporary installation or full-scale piloting.
Unbudgeted and Unforeseen Equipment Failure
Equipment such as in-plant deionizers are maintenance intensive and unexpected catastrophic failures occasionally occur. Suddenly you are faced with potential downtime and very expensive repairs or replacement. The WaterProfessionals® offer emergency, temporary water treatment to fill this gap. In many cases, monies were not budgeted for major rebuild or repair. Frequently, cost analysis of repairing or replacing the system and continuing to operate it in-house shows outsourcing to be more economical. The WaterProfessionals® can help you analyze the costs both ways. We offer own-operate programs with equipment located inside your facility or outside in trailer-mounted configurations. There is no capital outlay, delivery is generally quick, and your operators and maintenance personnel can remain focused on supporting your manufacturing operation.
Regulatory Pressure
Have increasingly stringent municipal or NPDES discharge regulations or employee safety or environmental concerns made your current water or wastewater treatment system obsolete? For example, in-plant deionizers require handling, storing and discharging large volumes of caustic and acid. Frequently, reverse osmosis or electrodeionization which do not use chemicals can be substituted for ion exchange demineralization. In other cases, when used as pretreatment to in-plant deionizers, reverse osmosis can reduce regeneration frequency by 90% or more.
Flexibility
Do you have difficulty predicting today, the treatment requirements two or three years into the future? Outsourced operations typically offer more flexibility to address changing operating conditions such as water flows, water analysis, etc. Mobile or skid-mounted equipment can be quickly provided for short term or permanent solutions.
Case Studies
Review several case studies to learn how others have benefited from outsourcing water treatment.