Silicon Valley Clean Water Cites Confience's Experience and Feature-set as Reasons for Choosing TITAN® LIMS
TITAN allowed SVCW to eliminate printed worksheets and implement a LIMS that meets California's new NELAC requirements.
Silicon Valley Clean Water (SVCW) is a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) that provides wastewater treatment services to more than 220,000 people in the San Francisco Bay Area that includes Belmont, Redwood City, San Carlos, and West Bay Sanitary District, CA. The wastewater plant treats 15 million gallons of water daily (MGD), has a design flow of 29 MGD, and a peak wet weather design flow of 71 MGD. During the six drier months of the year, 1 - 2 MGD of treated and disinfected water is directed back to the community as recycled water for landscape irrigation, commercial, and industrial applications.
Laboratory Services is a Division of SVCW occupying a 6,500 sq. ft. state-of-the-art laboratory built in 1991 and located at the wastewater treatment plant. The laboratory is staffed by a Laboratory Director and six laboratory analysts. The lab's primary mission is to provide vital chemical and microbiological analyses to the wastewater treatment plant 365 days a year. Samples are collected and analyzed throughout the various stages of the treatment process to give plant operators prompt feedback on wastewater parameters. The laboratory performs a variety of chemical and microbiological tests with >30,000 reportable results annually.
The laboratory also analyzes wastewater discharge from permitted industries in the SVCW territory. Sampling and inspections of industrial sites are performed by another SVCW division, and the laboratory analyzes and reports both internally and externally generated data. The laboratory is certified by California's Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program (ELAP) under the State Water Resources Control Board.
Their Challenge
For many years the laboratory staff used printed worksheets and Microsoft Excel to produce data summaries. Using paper data sheets meant that data was all handwritten. Bench sheets were also completed manually and then hand keyed into SVCW's plant operations database, which served as a data warehouse for the lab. The reliance on manual documentation methods increased the likelihood of data transcription errors and duplication of effort resulting in data quality issues and longer turnaround times. The SVCW laboratory invested in scientific instruments to conduct their testing including an ICP spectrometer, TOC analyzer, UV-Visible Spectrophotometer, and an Ion Chromatograph (IC). However, the laboratory did not have the instruments integrated into any automation solution. This meant that the testing data generated by the instrument needed to be manually transcribed onto pre-printed worksheets, which was time consuming and error prone. Being able to generate timely and accurate reporting for internal analysis as well as to satisfy external compliance requirements was also a challenge.
There were no standard internal reports such as production, worklist, and turnaround time. Backlog was determined by looking in the refrigerators for sample containers. Reports to customers were generated by entering the data with a pen on a printed template and then scanning and emailing it to the client. And regulatory reporting was done by compiling results in a worksheet and then retyping it onto a form or entering into a website.
Finally, because most data was kept on paper, this meant that historical records were stored in file cabinets. Although the records were organized in some level of chronological order, it still resulted in a very time-consuming effort when trying to find data for an audit and not the best use of the talented laboratory resources.
Bob Wandro | Ph.D., Laboratory Director
Silicon Valley Clean Water
Our Solution
SVCW's Laboratory Director, Bob Wandro, Ph.D., had worked in a larger environmental laboratory which invested in a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS). He found LIMS was a powerful example of laboratory technology, which played a critical role in automating many tasks and improving the lab's productivity. Bob felt that a LIMS at SVCW would solve many of the issues that the team was experiencing. His primary goal was to implement a LIMS that would interface with their existing data warehouse, replace an application used for creating control charts, and provide a wealth of new capabilities including bench automation, instrument integration, result validation, statistical analysis of data, report creation/management, and the elimination of paper files wherever possible. In addition, the data would be all securely held in a SQL Database with a complete audit trail, date and time stamps, the name of the person that made the change, the original result, and date and time stamps of the new result along with a reason for the change to the approved result.
In 2011, SVCW went through a comprehensive RFP selection process and selected Confience’s TITAN LIMS. In making their decision, SVCW chose TITAN for the following reasons:
- TITAN's intuitive user interface promotes ease of use with its ribbon-based menu and flexible configurability.
- User-definable dashboards provide real-time visual alerts to potential issues.
- TITAN provides granularity in terms of what a user can see and do in the LIMS based on roles and privileges in the system.
- TITAN can create comprehensive reports on nearly any aspect of the lab's operation.
- TITAN's ability to track QC, especially the ability to view data trends for a variety of factors over time, is very valuable to the lab.
- TITAN's built-in 'Graphic' Calendars. Separate visual calendars for Sample Scheduling, Corrective Action/Preventative Action, Instrument Maintenance, and other tasks.
- TITAN allows for integration with SVCW's instruments, eliminating the manual data entry and related data quality issues, elimination of transcription errors, high data quality, improved resource utilization and accelerated turnaround times.
- TITAN provides the lab with a powerful data management solution that allows SVCW to respond promptly to internal/external data requests, regulatory audit queries, and to generate whatever reporting is needed.
- TITAN has several features and additional functionality that SVCW hopes to use in the future. This includes bulk sample login imports, method permission tied to method training, and the use of tablets at the bench and at sampling sites. SVCW is also looking to leverage TITAN for workflows to confirm logic checking of sample collection-receiving-analysis date/times and to generate instrument maintenance status reports.
In selecting TITAN, SVCW also evaluated Confience and their capabilities as a LIMS provider. Confience has an established reputation in the LIMS industry, especially in the water/wastewater sector. Confience also has a proven LIMS implementation process that is based on project management fundamentals encompassing the installation, configuration, training and support of TITAN. SVCW was convinced that Confience's focus on quality control, being the first independent LIMS firm to become ISO 9001 certified, would ensure a successful LIMS deployment. SVCW has been using TITAN for several years now, is very happy with it, and looks forward to taking even greater advantage of its powerful capabilities as the laboratory continues to become further automated.
This is a critical time for water and wastewater laboratories in California due to the State's transition from a less stringent certification process (ELAP) to widely accepted and rigorous TNI (The NELAC Institute) Program. SVCW's compliance requirements include providing discharge monitoring results to the California Integrated Water Quality System (CIWQS). By leveraging the CIWQS Export feature in TITAN, the electronic reporting is significantly simplified. TITAN is ready with built-in features such as Corrective Action / Preventative Action, email reminders and displays that lead staff quickly through the root cause analysis. Audit tracking is extensive and configurable with 360 items. A single item such as 'Samples' has 70 properties, and each property has an 'on/off' and 'Requires Reason if changed' checkbox. SVCW sees TITAN as playing a critical role in helping manage the complexities of wastewater management and regulatory compliance in California today as well as into the future as the regulatory landscape continues to evolve.
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