The MWH Soft Best Innovation Awards are judged by a panel of industry experts and presented during the MWH Soft User Conference. They recognize the most innovative modeling and engineering advancements made by the extensive community of customers who use MWH Soft software, the industry-leading choice for comprehensive water and wastewater systems management. Winners are chosen for engineering excellence and ground breaking innovation.

The awards honor the exceptional work of MWH Soft users toward advancing the state of the art in hydraulic infrastructure planning, design, optimization, operations, and management. These projects set benchmarks for their industries and showcase the creativity and technical mastery of the organizations that created them. MWH Soft established the competitive award program in 2002. Among the many progressive organizations that have received the award are the Butler County Department of Environmental Services, Ohio, the Regional Municipality of Durham, Ontario, Canada, and Denver Water, Colorado.

For 2007, the Las Vegas Valley Water District (LVVWD), Nevada and American Water, New Jersey, were the recipients of this prestigious honor. The award categories were surge modeling for water quality protection and integrated energy management for optimized operations.

The LVVWD won the award for expertly deploying advanced hydraulic and water quality modeling and GIS applications, as well as genetic algorithm optimization, in conducting distribution system operational studies to identify the most energy-efficient and cost-effective pump scheduling policies for maximum system performance and energy savings. Annual savings of $1.2M (about 8 percent) in energy cost were achieved. American Water leveraged the power of transient/surge analysis to determine the characteristics that make water systems vulnerable to negative pressure transients. A common set of modeling scenarios were tested to develop a vulnerability ranking, evaluate mitigation approaches, and provide sound guidance in selecting optimum pressure monitoring locations. This vital analysis will allow water quality professionals, regulators, and scientists around the world to better estimate the importance of negative pressure transients, identify risks, evaluate protective measures, and develop improved monitoring and operational plans and mitigation strategies.

Congratulations to both organizations. They have demonstrated the highest standards of water distribution modeling excellence.

Your connection to the visionaries who are directing the future of network modeling

MWH Soft hosted its fifth International Geoengineering Conference in Broomfield, Colorado, entitled Advances in Geospatial Infrastructure Modeling and Management Technology on August 27-28, 2007. The conference drew full house attendance with a remarkable group of engineering and GIS professionals who came to share their knowledge and experience from around the world, including the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, South Africa, and the Middle-East. The conference was sponsored by the US Environmental Protection Agency and ESRI, and featured keynote addresses from Laura Jacobsen, P.E. (Manager of Planning Division for the Las Vegas Valley Water District, NV), William R. Kirkpatrick, P.E. (Manager of Water Distribution Planning for East Bay Municipal Utility District, CA) and Kala K. Fleming, Ph.D (Environmental Scientist with American Water, NJ). Presenters from major utilities and top engineering firms rounded out the event with a wide variety of innovative solutions to real-world problems.

The International Geoengineering Conference (IGC) provides an interactive forum for presenting the state of the art in water and wastewater infrastructure geoengineering; facilitating ongoing cooperation and exchange of technological innovations and proven solutions; and discussing the issues, regulatory activities and technological challenges that face the geoenvironmental community.

During two days of content-rich gatherings, the conference offered attendees twenty-five carefully selected state-of-the-art, real-world situations and customer success stories, presented by experts from around the world. Topics covered the latest advances in transient analysis, 3-D modeling, and real-time control applications; development of improved water quality models; pressure zone design and management; planning effective unidirectional flushing programs; energy optimization; and construction and calibration of large-scale water and sewer dynamic hydraulic models. Experts also discussed the management of urban runoff and wet weather water quality problems in combined, sanitary and storm sewers aimed at optimizing BMP and LID designs, meeting SSO and CSO regulations, refining system design and rehabilitation, enhancing operations, and improving infrastructure security. MWH Soft executives also previewed a number of forthcoming products, including sophisticated tools for pond design, flood modeling, capital investment planning, asset management, and advanced treatment plant hydraulic analysis and design.

The event also looked at the latest developments in other critical areas, including innovative master planning technologies and the role of GIS and Asset Management in improving business performance.

The conference receives glowing testimonials from all attendees. “I continue to be highly impressed by the quality of speakers and audience you attract to your conferences. Congratulations to you and your team on an exceptionally successful conference. You rock!” commented Tony A. Akel, P.E., President of Akel Engineering Group, Inc., a specialty engineering firm providing consulting services in water resources infrastructure modeling and master planning.

According to the conference co-chair Dr. Kala K. Fleming, this year’s conference was the best yet. “IGC has become a true community setting for water and wastewater modeling professionals. Because this major event attracts a large international gathering of leading experts, it offers industry professionals a unique opportunity to explore exciting new technologies, join in the modeling debate, benchmark against and network with their peers, find solutions, hone their management skills, enhance operations, and boost their future productivity and success.”

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