The Greater Cincinnati Water Works (GCWW) has begun a project to automate data collection from its 235,000 water meters. VSI Group Inc. was selected as the General Contractor to install Neptune Technology Group's ARB Water Revenue System.
GCWW will call the Automatic Meter Reading project "H2O Radio" as a way of building awareness within the community and the waterworks industry. The main benefits for the community are accuracy of the reading, convenience to the residents, and the fact that the program is self-financing and will not impact water rates. Installations were scheduled to begin in June and continue over a 4-year deployment.
The project includes installation of Neptune meters equipped with ProRead™ absolute encoder registers and R900 radio frequency (RF) meter interface units (MIUs).
"GCWW has been reading water meters for more than 144 years. For many, many of those years we have been using Neptune meters. So, we are very excited that H2O Radio and Neptune's technology is moving us toward a new wave of customer service and efficiency. We believe we have a strong team with GCWW, VSI, and Neptune and we are looking forward to the implementation of H2O Radio," said Connie Roesch, Superintendent of Commercial Services Division.
As general contractor, VSI will assign an on-site, Cincinnati-based Project Manager, a local Master Plumber, and up to 18 experienced plumbers as field installers. VSI Group's Corporate Trainer is certified by Neptune on Neptune's R900 RF MIU. Additionally, VSI Group will provide call center services for the project.
"VSI is very excited to begin the AMR deployment for the Greater Cincinnati Water Works. A great deal of planning and preparation has occurred over the last few months and the working relationship that has developed between ourselves, Neptune Technology Group and the Greater Cincinnati Water Works has been excellent. We could not have asked for a better team," said David McGinley, VP of Sales and Marketing for VSI Group.
