Water Efficiency May 2012 : Page 44
Chris Summers, regional director with Energy Systems Group, says his company began replacing Brooksville’s meters in July of 2011. Th e company fi nished the project, including the upgrade of several of the city's larger meter stations, in October of that same year. By the time the project fi nished, Energy Systems Group workers had replaced every meter in Brooksville 44 WATER EFFICIENCY WWW.WATEREFFICIENCY.NET that had been installed before 2006. “We replaced a variety of meters on this project,” says Summers. “Some meters dated back to the 1950s. Others came in during the early part of the housing boom. Th e bulk of the meters that we replaced, though, fell between 15 and 20 years in age.” Better than bubblegum — real infrastructure improvements Summers says that he expects Energy Systems Group to tackle a continuing fl ow of performance-con-tract projects in the future. Performance-contract work accounts for the bulk of the company’s workload, he says. Since the company’s found-ing in 1994, Energy Systems Group has tackled more than $1.2 billion worth of projects, many fueled by these perfor-mance contracts. “A lot of cities, espe-cially smaller cities, know the benefi ts of upgrading their meters and water equipment, but they lack the capital dol-lars to make infrastructure improvements,” says Sum-mers. “With a performance contract, you guarantee the results for clients. Th ey can improve their systems without worrying about how they are going to pay for the improvements.” Steven Bruskiewicz, Municipal Solutions Qual-ity Manager for Johnson Controls, says it makes sound economic sense for munici-palities and water districts to work with outside consultants to improve their infrastruc-ture, repair leaks, and update their meters. And with performance contracting, water superintendents can more easily sell such projects to budget-conscious city or town council members. Bruskiewicz says meter improvements are an espe-cially wise investment on the part of utilities. Not surpris-ingly, such projects account for a signifi cant amount of the work that Johnson Controls performs for water districts. “Water meters are cash registers for utilities,” says Bruskiewicz. “It behooves them to make them more effi cient.” Just because this solution makes sense, though—and will, in fact, gener-ate increased yearly revenue for utili-ties—doesn't mean that all water utility
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