Improving Water Systems Operations with Better Data Flow

Orange County Utilities (OCU)

Orange County Utilities (OCU) runs a large‑scale water distribution maintenance program anchored by a multi‑year flushing cycle. As the program expanded, critical data scattered across models, GIS, spreadsheets, and thousands of manual work orders—creating a visibility gap between planning and field performance. With limited resources, OCU struggled to spot patterns, identify outliers, and drive consistent, data‑driven improvement.

EPIC solutions delivered:

Operational Excellence & Automation

• Administrative Time Savings: Achieved a significant reduction in manual data processing time by automating the creation of 30,000 annual work orders.

• Workflow Acceleration: Reduced the "Model-to-Field" lead time (the time it takes to turn a hydraulic model into actionable field tasks) from weeks to days.

Resource Conservation & Efficiency

• Water Loss Mitigation: Achieved significant reduction non-revenue water (NRW) usage through the synchronization of modeled flushing durations with actual field requirements.

• Labor Optimization: Saw measurable increase "wrench time" or field productivity by eliminating manual map-reading and disparate data entry for field crews.

Enhanced Water Quality & Compliance

• Flushing Precision: Increased the percentage of "High-Performance Flushes" (meeting target velocity/turbidity) through sequence optimization.

• Spatial Resolution: Identified and resolved several previously undetected underperforming zones or "dead ends" using GIS spatial analytics.

Asset & Data Integrity

• Data Accuracy: Improved data reliability by replacing manual data entry with integrated GIS and hydraulic model syncing, eliminating human transcription errors.

• Predictive Readiness: Established a baseline, making it "AI-ready" for future predictive maintenance and real-time optimization.

Orange County Utilities (OCU) is a major public utility serving the Orlando metropolitan area and surrounding communities. The utility operates an extensive infrastructure network that includes approximately 2,000 miles of water mains, 33,000 valves, 12,000 hydrants, and multiple regional water supply facilities that support a rapidly growing population.