Operational issues in critical water infrastructure rarely begin with dramatic failures. More often, they appear subtly—an unexpected shutdown, a system that won’t stabilize, or an operator compensating for behavior no one fully understands. These warning signs are easy to overlook, but they often trace back to decisions made long before the system went live.
In water and wastewater projects, selecting the lowest bid is often seen as disciplined procurement because the price is clear and easy to justify. In practice, however, it can simply transfer costs from capital expenditure into operations. Capabilities that matter most after commissioning—diagnostics, integration, testing rigor, usability, and long-term supportability—are often difficult to evaluate during procurement and therefore easy to undervalue.
The result is a hidden operational burden: the time spent troubleshooting issues that should have been resolved from the start.
At Saunders Automation, we see this pattern repeatedly across water and wastewater projects. While every project is different, the underlying issue is often the same: the industry’s definition of value frequently stops at project delivery, while the real costs emerge over decades of operation.
When the pressure hits the pipes
Most projects look solid during the design phase, even when specifications are reused from previous jobs. The real test comes during commissioning, when process dynamics, control logic, and system integration must perform together in real operating conditions. This is often where low-cost integration approaches begin to show their limitations.
Once hydraulic pressure hits the pipes, the reality of the system becomes clear.
In one case, a water delivery system could not be stabilized during commissioning. The integrator had experience with telemetry systems, but not with process control. The consequences escalated quickly: taps blew off the walls, pipes split, water pressure was inconsistent, and the client had little visibility into the root cause.
The engineers in question were unable to recognize the mechanical design issues in the system—mistaking them for process control issues. After multiple unsuccessful attempts to tune out the issues, their client asked for external assistance. With a much wider field of experience, Saunders quickly identified the root cause and proposed a simple solution that solved the problem.
Issues like this are rarely visible during procurement. They only become clear when the system is required to perform under real-world conditions.
In our experience, rigorous factory testing with full simulation remains the exception rather than the standard. As a result, unresolved commissioning issues often carry directly into operations, creating workforce dependency, ongoing troubleshooting, and long-term operational risk.
What appears to be a cost saving during procurement can quickly become an operational liability once the asset enters service.
Ask the person on the plant floor
Operators evaluate systems in practical terms. In well-designed environments, automation can be trusted with confidence. When problems occur, the system provides clear information that allows operators to troubleshoot quickly and effectively.
In less robust systems, however, manual intervention becomes routine. Failures lack clear causes, troubleshooting depends on external support, and teams gradually begin improvising to keep operations running.
At one facility, a belt screen tension system failed after the low-bid integrator had left the project. With no clear resolution available, the operator resorted to taping a broomstick to the machine to manually maintain tension.
Workarounds like this—where failure quietly becomes accepted as a “fix”—are more common than many organizations would like to admit.
They also reveal something important: operators ultimately absorb the consequences of design and procurement decisions. When systems are difficult to understand or maintain, the burden does not disappear. It simply shifts from the project team to the people responsible for keeping the plant running every day.
The cost of complexity
As systems become more difficult to interpret, critical knowledge becomes concentrated in a small number of individuals. New operators inherit systems with limited documentation and inconsistent behavior, while troubleshooting increasingly relies on tribal knowledge rather than system design.
Historically, experienced operators could compensate for many of these shortcomings. That assumption is becoming increasingly risky.
In Australia’s water sector, approximately 20% of urban water utility staff are aged 55 or older.
This demographic shift changes the equation. Operational simplicity is no longer just a convenience—it is becoming a resilience requirement.
As experienced personnel leave the workforce, the knowledge gap continues to widen. Organizations are left maintaining systems that were never designed to be intuitive or easy to support.
Under budget pressure, less visible capabilities—such as diagnostics, usability, and energy optimization— can also be deprioritized. Instead, investment often shifts toward more visible initiatives, such as on-site renewables, that are easier to justify, even when they deliver limited value if not fully integrated into the plant’s control strategy.
The challenge is not simply technology. It is ensuring that technology remains understandable, maintainable, and effective throughout the life of the asset.
Who’s representing the client?
These challenges stem from the way projects are specified, evaluated, and delivered.
Scope documentation can leave significant room for interpretation, while procurement models may prioritize price over demonstrated capability. In some cases, asset owners rely on internal teams or external advisors who have never actually built or commissioned a plant of comparable complexity.
Without experienced representation on the client side—particularly from people who understand how these systems perform in operation—risk can be difficult to identify and even harder to manage.
Oncea contract is awarded, the opportunity to influence outcomes becomes significantly more limited.
The reality is that many of the most expensive operational costs never appear on the bid sheet. They emerge later as downtime, troubleshooting effort, workforce dependency, energy inefficiency, and lost productivity.
So, what’s a more effective approach?
Improving outcomes does not require a fundamental shift in technology. Instead, it requires a more practical approach to defining value—one that considers operational performance alongside project cost.
In practice, that often comes down to a few non-negotiables:
- Defining scope in operational terms: Focus not only on what the system should include, but also on how it should perform under real operating conditions.
- Evaluating experience alongside price: Particularly experience in commissioning, troubleshooting, and managing real-world system behavior.
- Designing for the operator: Systems should be diagnosable, predictable, and usable without constant reliance on external support.
- Prioritizing performance over visibility: Investments should be evaluated based on how they improve plant operation over time, not simply how they affect project cost at award.
Running itself, or running your team
The infrastructure assets being built today will operate for decades. The question is not whether they met specification on day one. It is whether operators will still be able to trust, understand, and maintain them ten years from now.
That is often the true measure of project success.
Designing for the operator is what separates a plant that runs smoothly from one that continuously drains time and resources. A mature approach focuses on systems that perform reliably, operators who can trust them, and outcomes that remain sustainable over the long term.
Because in critical infrastructure, the most expensive costs are rarely the ones captured in the initial bid. They are the ones that surface later—in operations, maintenance, and the daily effort required to keep essential services running.
Learn how a more practical, operationally focused approach to infrastructure investment can reduce rectification time and support long-term plant performance.
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