Press Coverage

38 csengineermag.com MAY 2019 Graham Nasby is an industry-recognized leader in the water/wastewa- ter community for his efforts with DCS/SCADA (distributed control systems/supervisory control and data acquisition) systems, standards development, raising cybersecurity awareness, and alarm management. Through his work with the International Society of Automation (ISA) and IEC, Nasby has co-authored international standards in alarm man- agement, cyber security, and HMI (human machine interface) design. He has also worked with the ISA, American Water Works Association, Water Environment Federation, and other industry groups to author numerous articles on SCADA best practices, led the annual ISA Water/ Wastewater and Automatic Controls Symposium, and contributed to other industry events. Nasby is responsible for the long-term planning, design, construction/ implementation, and commissioning of the automated control systems for the City of Guelph Water Services in Ontario, Canada. Before he joined Guelph, he worked for various consulting engineering firms where he provided project management and alarm management ser- vices for a variety of industries. C+S Engineer magazine caught up with Nasby via phone and email this spring. This is what he had to say. C+S: You have a background in cybersecurity awareness and alarm management. As it pertains to water/wastewater, what's the issue? Graham Nasby: Computerized systems are one of the ubiquitous realities in any modern water utility. We use computers for billing, customer management systems, work planning, reporting, and water plant control systems, not to mention day-to-day office applications such as Word, Excel and email. Without properly functioning computer systems, it is simply not possible to effectively operate. In many ways, looking after cybersecurity is like purchasing life insurance to protect your family. You don't realize how much you need it until it's too late. Water utilities need to do a better job of protecting the computer sys- tems that enable them to keep the business operating and the water flowing. Alarm management is all about using your plant control system to improve operational effectiveness and reducing overtime costs. Like any process industry, modern water plants have sophisticated auto- matic control systems that look after many details, so that operators can focus on more important tasks rather than just spinning valves and starting/stopping pumps. The purpose of an "alarm" is a notification that is supposed to interrupt an operator, in order to divert their atten- tion to something that must be investigated and acted upon right away. Whether an alarm is used during the day shift or via an after-hours call out system, we need to take the time to properly design the alarm notifications so they only interrupt our plant staff in situations that truly need a timely response. Too many alarms lead to operator fatigue and higher overtime costs. Too many alarms are also a symptom of a plant or an automated control system that is not working well. Operators who get used to having to "ignore" a lot of alarms become complacent, and often won't respond appropriately when a truly abnormal event is communicated using an alarm. Want to know more? Take a look at the ISA-18.2 alarm management standard and books by Bill Hollifield and D. H. Rothenberg. C+S: Human/Machine Interface: In a nutshell, tell us about the future of this technology. GN: The HMI, or Human Machine Interface, is the set of computer screens that operators and engineers use to interact with automatic control systems. In the old days, the HMI was usually located in a plant's centralized room and the screens were hard to read. Old HMI technology was also expensive to install and difficult to update. Nowa- THE WATER WORKS CANADIAN ENGINEER GRAHAM NASBY ENJOYS IMPROVING THE LIVES OF THOSE AROUND HIM, SOMETHING HE DOES EVERYDAY. By Richard Massey Graham Nasby, P.Eng. at one of the City of Guelph's newest water treatment plants (Guelph, Ontario, Canada). Photo by: Andrew Toms

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