AWWA IMTECH51454

Tacoma Water, a municipally owned water utility since 1893, serves some 83,000 customers in the City of Tacoma, Washington, and parts of Pierce county and south King county. One of Tacoma Water's goals is to respond to all water quality problems within the same business day. To support this goal, and to respond to other types of trouble calls, the utility needed to improve the process for dispatching trouble crews, providing uniform incident response, tracking responses and collecting data for statistical analysis. A trouble-call management database was developed that streamlined the dispatching process and provided on-line help so that customer service representatives and dispatchers could provide uniform responses and track response activities. The database tracks the statusof water quality complaints and records the timelines and crew work details performed on the job. This paper discusses how use of this database, combined with wireless field access to the data, helps Tacoma Water maintain quality drinking water. Includes figures.