To avoid incidence of burst pipes and water losses, Air Selangor conducts scheduled maintenance work on its assets so that water supply to its 8.4 million consumers in the Klang Valley will not be disrupted.
What consumers should know
MAINTENANCE is the act of keeping property or equipment in good condition by making repairs, correcting problems and so on.*
Let’s take car maintenance as an example to better understand this concept. Scheduled maintenance is crucial to ensure our car is in good condition always, therefore avoiding the unexpected breakdown.
The same goes for all Air Selangor’s water assets.
As the sole water services provider in Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya, Air Selangor is responsible to abstract, treat and distribute clean and safe water supply to its 8.4 million consumers.
All of its 34 water treatment plants operate 24 hours every day to produce an average of 5,000 million litres per day (MLD) of treated water that is then distributed via 29,000km of pipelines.
And it does not stop there. Air Selangor also manages more than 1,610 service reservoirs, 732 pump houses and 1,117 water sampling stations.
As the largest water operator in Malaysia with thousands of assets, it is Air Selangor's responsibility to perform scheduled maintenance work.
Some of these assets – like the pipelines, for example – are more than 20 to 30 years old. At the moment, Air Selangor has a total of 87,815 assets, and the estimated number of assets is expected to increase to 104,624 by 2023.
Why does scheduled maintenance need to be implemented?
Every asset has its lifespan and must be maintained or serviced before it reaches breaking point to avoid damage.
All Air Selangor assets have to undergo regular preventive and corrective maintenance. With the implementation of its work and asset management system, maintenance work can be efficiently scheduled and performed to prevent sudden incidents that may lead to unscheduled water disruption affecting consumers at large.
What happens if maintenance work is not implemented?
Without scheduled maintenance work, there is a high likelihood of unscheduled water disruption due to breakdown of pump house equipment, water treatment plant assets, or pipe burst.
As such, the implementation of scheduled maintenance work reduces the probability of unscheduled water disruption.
What is the procedure behind scheduled maintenance and water supplydisruption?
Each year, Air Selangor schedules maintenance work on its water supply assets based on their active lifespan estimate.
Before any big scale scheduled maintenance work is implemented, water operators must present a comprehensive plan to Suruhanjaya Perkhidmatan Air Negara (SPAN).
Upon approval, water operators are mandated to inform the consumers seven days before the start of the work. This includes publishing the water disruption and water supply recovery plan for the affected areas, to allow affected consumers to store water beforehand. Water operators must also provide timely updates of the entire schedule of engineering works.
During scheduled water disruptions, maintenance work will be carried out on the relevant assets within the stipulated time.
For example, when maintenance work at a water treatment plant is completed, it will take up to six hours to stabilise each part of the water treatment process at the water treatment plant. This is to ensure that the reservoir balance is filled up to the 4m-level while also ensuring it is in an optimal state.
Water supply will then be restored through the supply distribution system and will take 12 hours to refill the reservoirs.
Consumers will start to receive their water in stages once the supply system has stabilised.
The duration of water supply recovery in the affected areas will vary depending on the distance of the consumers’ premises and the water pressure at the distribution system.
What is the alternative supply during water disruption?
During scheduled or unscheduled water disruptions, Air Selangor provides alternative water supply assistance through water tankers to be mobilised to the affected areas, with priority given to critical premises such as hospitals and dialysis centres as well as for funeral services.
Consumers can also visit hentitugas.airselangor.com for updates on affected areas, estimated recovery time, locations of the local water services, and public taps that will be activated during water disruption.
Are there cases wherein consumers do not face dry taps during maintenance?
Consumers will be informed of any water disruption via the Air Selangor app.
There were also instances wherein the scheduled maintenance work did not cause any water disruption.
Any scheduled maintenance work will be properly planned and would involve a huge team consisting of contractors and on-site staff, water treatment plant management team, water quality lab specialists, distribution team, customer experience personnel, health and safety officers, communication update for the public, and regional offices’ manpower. Everyone will work together through the coordination of the emergency response plan team.
To minimise the impact of disruption, Air Selangor may activate a mitigation plan to provide alternative water supply from the unaffected water treatment plants. This is made possible through the interconnectivity of the water supply system.
What are the criteria set by SPAN for scheduled maintenance work?
Before the implementation of any maintenance work, water operators must comply with the guidelines set by SPAN to obtain approval on the work. Water operators must ensure that:
>Critical areas such as hospitals and dialysis centres that cannot be affected by water disruption are identified.
>The date and time when the work is implemented do not take place seven days before or seven days after major festivities as well as major examination dates set by the government such as the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM).
Air Selangor implements scheduled maintenance work with proper planning even at night.
Does Air Selangor have any pipe replacement programme?
Some assets like pipelines that were inherited are more than 30 years old.
Through Air Selangor’s 30-year business plan, there is in place a pipe replacement programme whereby the water operator would replace more than 6,000km of asbestos pipes – at the rate of about 150km of pipes each year.
These pipes are categorised as ageing pipes or beyond economic repair which require replacement.
Across Air Selangor’s distribution network, these ageing pipes are mostly asbestos cement pipes. They will be replaced with high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and ductile iron pipes which are more resilient to pressure and weather changes.
Towards a sustainable future
Air Selangor strives to deliver clean, safe and sustainable water to consumers through its continuous efforts to increase supply margin, improve operational efficiency at its water treatment plants and minimise water losses in its distribution networks.
“Our unwavering commitment to deliver the best customer experience through a high standard of service is underpinned by the core values practised by our employees. We hope that the public can play their part in consuming water more efficiently and prudently to ensure the conservation and protection of raw water sources and at the same time reduce the scarcity of raw water supply in the long run,” Air Selangor says in a statement.
* Merriam-Webster.com dictionary
