Protecting clean water for communities

Protecting clean water for communities

The Challenge

The computer operating system of the panel that controlled the valves and pumps drawing water in the treatment plant crashed. The original supplier was unable to address the problem, and Tulsar Canada was commissioned by the Territorial Government through one of Tulsar’s biggest customers, to find a solution. Tulsar was required to:

• Arrive in Nunavut as soon as possible.
• Identify whether the problem was a software or hardware issue.
• Reboot and repair the system, and install protection against future crashes

The Solution

Within 24 hours of the call, our engineers had gathered typical spare parts that could be required, identified solutions within the software to reboot the operating system of the control panel and were on site making the required repairs.

Faulty parts were replaced and the system was repaired and restarted. This work included a test to ensure the problem wouldn’t re-occur and an assessment of the entire system to identify future problems that may arise.

Tulsar Canada also installed a fix to the programming that will allow the system to self recover in the event of a future crash, with a specialized code to instruct the processor to restart itself should a similar fault occur, which should clear any bugs and allow the system to continue running safely and smoothly.

The Benefit

Besides ensuring community residents continue to have access to clean water, the solution implemented by Tulsar Canada is a protection against future failures. The effort also provided a list of future hardware and software upgrades that will further protect the integrity of the system.

Among the recommendations is the installation of a remote modem that will allow our engineers to address problems in the system — whether troubleshooting or fixing faults in the programming — remotely from anywhere there is an Internet connection.