The existing water meter infrastructure was onerous as 90% of the water meters
required inside access to the home to obtain
a reading. The remaining 10% of the meter population had remotes in stalled outside the residence. Due to the rural setting, inefficiencies in collecting the reading data forced the Municipality to abandon the idea of implementing acompletely remote system. Macdonald was forced to resort to a system where by all 1,750 accounts were
required to telephone in their meter reading to the Municipality every quarter.
Readings were called in to a dedicated answering machine with the majority coming in during the few days prior to the due date. The Municipality had one person assigned to utility work. During the month after the bills were sent out, a minimum of 15% of the accounts called the Municipality with reading, billing and estimate questions. RF AMR technology was the optimum solution to achieve the Municipality’s goals. In addition 900 of the meters were replaced due to accuracy and migration issues. The previous billing cycle took approximately 5 weeks which included the time to collect and process the readings, the actual billing process, and customer calls. With the rapid downloading of the meter readings from the DAP 9800hand held systems, in a single day the Municipality can import the readings and print the bills for distribution.The previous billing cycle took approximately 5 weeks which included the time to collect and process the readings, the actual billing process, and customer calls. Today, a single meter reader can obtain all of the urban reads in one day and all of the rural reads in 3-4 days. With the rapid downloading of the meter readings from the DAP 9800 handheld systems, in a single day the Municipality can import there adings and print the bills for distribution. Post billing calls have declined dramatically with only 12 general inquiry calls during the last cycle. The utility is pleased to report that not a single billing adjustment was required. Overall, the reading and billing cycle is now 89% more efficient with a reduction in resource hours required from 380 hours to 40 hours. Improving data integrity. Utility personnel now have more time to focus on other productive services. A key benefit resulting from increased data integrity is the Municipality’s ability to conduct water audits, pinpoint leaks, and control unaccounted forwater. As water treatment costs will continue to increase, the Municipality can now use the reading data to audit water production more closely against over all usage.