Background

Owned by the Government of South Australia, SA Water maintains and operates assets worth $13 billion which includes water mains, sewer mains, wastewater treatment plants, reservoirs, Mini Hydro etc. SA Water generates electricity powered by water flowing from Anstey Hill to Hope Valley and owns desalination plants at Lonsdale and Penneshaw.

SA Water is safety conscious and seeks to maintain operations excellence in all its electrical activities and operator competency and safety. As such, it undertakes regular audits to benchmark operations against its enterprise procedures and industry best practice.

SA Water instructed Thomson Bridge to perform a desktop review of their HV switching manual and site audits on selected assets to confirm that safe work methods across sites are managed with consistency and in accordance with SA Water’s policies and procedures.

Our role

In 2017 Thomson Bridge conducted site inspections on three SA Water electrical assets and provided observations and corrective recommendations. Recently we verified that the recommendations have been implemented to the three sites, namely Morgan, Murray Bridge, and Swan Reach.

We conducted an interactive and informative review process to ensure recommendations had been implemented and assessed against HV operating procedures and SA electrical regulations.

We performed a desktop review of the SA Water HV switching manual, HV switching procedure and forms (e.g. electrical access authority, and permit documents) to align it with the South Australian switching manual and industry best practice for HV switching practices.

Project Details

• Client: SA Water
• Location: South Australia 
• Industry: Utilities
• Our role: Interactive and informative reviews to contribute to safety and competency objectives for vital state utility.
• Outcome: Received actionable and informative assessment of operations against best practice, procedures and regulations for electrical safe work practices across its facilities.