Orange County Utilities centralizes their SCADA system to increase operator visibility and reduce downtime

Orange County Utilities provides water, wastewater, reclaimed water, and solid waste services to enrich the lives of the citizens and guests of Orange County, Florida. They serve over 500,000 residents across a greater than 450-square-mile area.

For over 15 years, Orange County Utilities Water Operations has utilized iFIX as their preferred HMI/SCADA solution. Evolving alongside the product, they have made good use of some of its more advanced features like NSD (Network Status Display) and SCADASync tags for Enhanced Failover. The custom scripting capabilities in iFIX are also being used extensively for a variety of maintenance and operational enhancements such as embedded SOP’s, yard valve diagrams, reports, data exports, and flow meter testing.

They are using the iFIX Automation Reference, a valuable help tool intended for integrators and programmers who want to develop applications that access and manipulate information within the iFIX environment through a set of automation interfaces. The are leveraging the built-in functions together with the external reference capability in VB to unlock new capabilities. They use iFIX as their HMI/SCADA because of its reliability and extensive features that have matured over many years including the near limitless customization that is enabled through scripting. Now that they’ve opened the door to external code, they can really do just about anything they need.

“I do like the feature that's in there where you can import a like a .NET component. So, you know, if you don't like VB, maybe you can write your code in C#.NET and then import that as a component. iFIX has a lot of capabilities that I can link to using APIs. And that all comes from the fact that it's built on VB, the COM (Component Object Model) […] a lot of the Microsoft technologies make it very capable, especially if you're using Windows and you're using a lot of MS Office software…it happens to be a good fit for us.”

SCADA Administrator at Orange County Utilities

Their iFIX HMI/SCADA is centralized with a lot of redundancies. Each individual plant is running on its own local SCADA. Even if the connection from a local control room to the central one gets lost, they can still operate normally through the screens without having to put everything in manual.

They have a large distributed system, comprised of 8 I/O servers - 4 logical I/O SCADA pairs of 2 redundant servers each. Now with the virtualization project, they are able to move the virtual servers around using hardware fault redundant servers specific to the task. They have a robust system with daily backups which allows them to take automated backup images and spin that up as needed in the event that individual hardware goes down.

They have done the same with Proficy Historian. They have two primary Historians as well as a full backup Historian, each running as virtual machines. The backup Historian is configured such that it receives all the data that the primary Historians are collecting via the Historian Data Distributor. So, if one of the primary Historians goes down, while it won't actually collect new data, all the data previously collected will still be accessible to the operators for trending. Now that it's virtualized, it rarely goes down, but if it did, they would be able to spin up another virtual machine.

Results from industrial-strength SCADA automation software and high-performance HMI:

• Self-serve and performance data access
• Cost and time savings for IT
• Decreased downtime
• Increased operator visibility

Through iFIX HMI/SCADA, Orange County can standardize screens to increase data visibility. Their operators need to see the real-time data that comes from iFIX, but they also need the historical, especially when they are troubleshooting problems. With Proficy Software & Services they can pair real-time data from field devices and PLC’s with historical trending data from Proficy Historian. This is further bolstered by iFIX’s alarm logs, which have been embedded to the screens via custom scripting. Operators are empowered with a more complete picture for troubleshooting when all of the pertinent information is consolidated in one application. They don’t have to deal with multiple dashboards, since it is all accessible within iFIX.

Through a single pane of glass, they are able to embed information from other sources, whether it's Historian, PLC’s, logs, reports, or even embedding web pages with iFIX’s HTML 5-compliant Web browser control.

iFIX also enables increased security measures for Orange County Utilities. iFIX has features for locking down their machines. With Environment Protection, users can’t open up another program unless it’s launched from iFIX. They can't hit “ALT TAB” and switch to another window. Unless you have specifically given this privilege, users don’t have the ability to switch task. iFIX application controls as well as network and user security settings, available through the System Configuration Utility (SCU), enable customizable and capable security measures.

On the administrative side, iFIX has a diverse set of utilities and helper apps to monitor health and control the system. Mission Control, netdiag, Security Helper, and Data Sync Monitor, among others are utilized by SCADA admin staff to ensure smooth, secure operations.

Orange County Utilities Water Operations prioritizes making their operators active participants in plant operations. They meet with their operators continuously to get their feedback. When they do make major changes, they start by implementing those changes on a few machines first in order to get feedback before making the change plant-wide. This helps them understand preferences among operators on things like screens, geographic layout, etc. They are constantly working to improve their displays and make them logical so that operators can easily understand the process.

iFIX also enables centralization for Orange County Utilities Water Operations. They’re able to securely connect from one plant to another and visualize the data in one place which is key to reducing downtime given their operation covers a large geographic area. It would require a lot more man hours if they weren’t able to monitor conditions and troubleshoot problems from anywhere within the secure network. The centralization capabilities made possible through iFIX are a huge time saver for Orange County Utilities. When they get an alert, they are able to do their initial checks looking at the screens which combine data from many locations across the County.

“The support is top notch…the portal with all the knowledge-based articles and what-not is very good. And then when you open a case, you can give it a certain severity. If you make it the top severity, you're going to get a response right away…most of the time I'm making like a one or a two to the lower severity, and I get a I get a thoughtful response that points us in the right direction, if not the same day then the next day. We've always had great user experience with the support from Velotic. Also if you're already using Windows and Office software […] iFIX can do just about anything that you that you need it to do. So it's not limited in any way, really.”