Big Los Angeles pretreatment project to replace older parts of system

March 21, 2001—Black & Veatch has been selected by the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation's Industrial Waste Management Division (IWMD) to provide a comprehensive Pretreatment Information Management System (PIMS).

To replace and improve on the functions of the older and less cost-efficient system, the new PIMS will not only maintain and track users' regulatory data, but interface with the city's existing geographic information system (GIS), billing, and other essential city database sources. Black & Veatch's Oracle-based core PIMS will be customized and reconfigured to the city's specific needs. Covering such a large and complex area presents an unusually high degree of difficulty, particularly since it must allow for the area's rapid growth, while simultaneously containing costs.

Other key project activities include needs assessment, custom requirements specification, business process mapping, Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) interface, and extensive user training.

Los Angeles ranks as one of the five largest industrial wastewater pretreatment areas in the United States, regulating over 6,500 permitted industrial users and covering the largest geographic area for any city with a pretreatment program.

With the onset of new regulatory requirements, the total number of users tracked by the IMWD is expected to triple, exceeding 20,000 by the end of 2002.