The commissioning and closeout phase for WSSC Water’s Piscataway WRRF Bioenergy Project has successfully concluded, with final completion achieved in time for the New Year. Looking back on this one-of-a-kind project, which kicked off design in 2018, it is hard to put into words the enormity of the accomplishment associated with successfully starting up and turning over a project of this scale on time and under budget. Since words just can’t describe it, I’ll quantify this last phase in numbers, all since handoff from construction in May 2024.
9 – The Commissioning Plan went into development at the 65% design stage in 2018 and, once completed, had nine volumes that detailed our approach to functional testing, programming verification, seeding and biological acclimation, sampling strategy, operational demonstration testing, and performance and acceptance testing. The volumes totaled over 2,160 pages of planning and test forms that laid the foundation for our successful turnover strategy.
10 – The number of process areas that were in various stages of testing at the same time. The PC closeout team divided up the plant – from the highly complex combined heat and power area to the extremely temperamental biological processes – and were able to execute testing safely and methodically to hit schedule milestones.
109 – The number of training sessions provided to the owner. At an average hourly session, this means that we trained for 27 weeks!
125 – There were 125 final Operation and Maintenance (O&M) manuals approved, updated, printed, and turned over to WSSC Water. To get to the final manual, each had to be submitted and approved for a preliminary and pre-final version. This resulted in 375 submissions just for O&M manuals! And that is on top of the 1,364 submittals the project team managed for a project this size.
2,740 – Hard input/output points were individually checked. And this doesn’t even get close to the soft IO points managed over ethernet for this project.
1,124 – The number of pages of programming process descriptions the team used to go line-by-line with the integrator to verify that all automation was functional, safe, and reliable.
1,314 – Assets entered into WSSC Water’s asset management program. As part of the closeout process, the team entered specific attributes ranging from size to horsepower and materials of construction that WSSC Water will use to identify, manage, and maintain the new infrastructure associated with this project.
34 – The longest continuous shift the commissioning team pulled to execute a series of tests. The team dedicated to the closeout of this project was amazing – they were committed to its success and were relentless in the pursuit of achieving performance and customer satisfaction.
306,782 – The number of samples and data points entered and analyzed during ramp-up and acclimation. From seeding through acceptance, a spreadsheet was maintained between WSSC Water and PC Construction to share sample results and real-time data so we could collaboratively make process decisions.
14 – There were 14 separate operational demonstration tests completed to prove the reliability of the facility, ranging from eight hours to continuous 30-day, 24/7 runs.
25 – There were 25 performance guarantee tests completed to prove the successful performance of the facility. These tests were designed to push systems and subsystems to their limits to ensure the system remains fully functional even in the most stringent conditions.
4 – The number of acceptance tests completed to achieve full acceptance of the facility.
The enormity of the commissioning process is so impressive to look back on. I am so proud and honored to have been a part of such a landmark project for WSSC. This project proved that with the right amount of collaboration and planning, anything is possible!