21  Water & Wastewater Onboarding Questionnaire

Kav AI Onboarding & Facility Monitoring Assessment

Welcome to the Kav AI onboarding process. This questionnaire is designed specifically for public and private water utilities, water treatment plants, wastewater treatment facilities, and distribution systems. Your responses will help us understand your plant configuration, distributed pumping networks, wet-weather (Storm Watch) protocols, and regulatory requirements.

Please complete all sections as thoroughly as possible. Confidential information will be protected in accordance with our non-disclosure agreement (NDA) or public records (FOIA) guidelines where applicable.


21.1 Organization Information

  • Utility / Municipality Name: _________________________________________
  • Division / Business Unit: _____________________________________________
  • Primary Contact Name & Title: ________________________________________
  • Primary Contact Email & Phone: _______________________________________
  • Secondary Contact Name & Email: _____________________________________
  • Utility / Facility Address: ___________________________________________

21.2 Facility & System Overview

21.2.1 Utility Sector

Select all areas that apply to your utility’s responsibility:

21.2.2 Plant & System Details

  • Treatment Plant Name & National Database ID (if applicable): ___________
  • Physical Location (City, State/Province, Country): _____________________
  • Design Capacity (e.g., MGD - Million Gallons per Day): __________________
  • Average Daily Flow (MGD): _____________________________________________
  • Population Served: ____________________________________________________
  • Year Built & Major Rehabilitation Dates: ______________________________
  • Operating Hours & Staffing (e.g., 24/7 manned, day shift only, unattended night): __________________
  • Number of Remote Sites / Lift Stations / Booster Stations: ______________

21.2.3 Asset Inventory

Check all asset types that will be monitored by the Kav AI platform:


21.3 Distributed Sites and Remote Assets

Municipal water and collection systems often feature dozens of remote pumping and lift stations. Please detail your distributed assets:

  • Total Number of Unmanned Remote Sites (Lift/Booster Stations): __________
  • Geographic Service Area (sq. miles/km): _________________________________
  • Typical Communication Backhaul (Cellular, Radio, Fiber, Leased Lines): _________________
  • Frequency of Physical Inspections per Site (e.g., daily, twice-weekly, weekly): __________________
  • Do remote sites have local backup generators? [ ] Yes, all [ ] Yes, some [ ] No

21.3.1 Remote Site Challenges

Check all operational challenges you face with distributed pump and lift stations:


21.4 Storm Watch & Wet-Weather Event Operations

Kav AI is built to assist operators during high-stress operations like Storm Watch, correlating SCADA alarms, hydraulic levels, and weather data.

  • What weather triggers prompt the activation of “Storm Watch” or wet-weather staffing? (e.g., > 1 inch of rain per hour) __________________________________________________________________________

  • How are field crews positioned and dispatched during a major storm event? __________________________________________________________________________

  • How do operators prioritize which remote lift stations or CSO structures to look at first? __________________________________________________________________________

21.4.1 Storm Watch Pain Points

Check all issues that impact your operations during extreme wet-weather events:


21.5 Control Systems & OT Infrastructure

21.5.1 SCADA & Historian

  • SCADA Vendor & Product Name (e.g., Wonderware/AVEVA System Platform, Ignition, GE iFIX, VTScada): _________________________________________________
  • SCADA Software Version & Year: _______________________________________
  • Historian in Use (e.g., Wonderware Historian, Canary Labs, Ignition Historian): _________________
  • Data Polling/Update Frequency (e.g., 5s, 30s, 1m): ___________________

21.5.2 PLC & Controller Inventory

List primary controller types (e.g., Allen-Bradley ControlLogix/CompactLogix, Schneider Electric Modicon, Siemens S7-1200):

  • Controller Vendor & Model: ___________________________________________
  • Approximate Quantity: _______________________________________________
  • Age Range: ___________________________________________________________

21.5.3 Communication Protocols

Check all protocols supported by your control networks:


21.6 Alarm Management & Operator Workflows

21.6.1 Alarm Volume & Fatigue

  • Approximate Number of Configured Alarms: ______________________________
  • Average Alarms per Day (Normal Operations): ___________________________
  • Average Alarms per Day (Storm / Wet-Weather Event): ___________________
  • Estimated Percentage of “Nuisance” Alarms: ________%

21.6.2 Operator Workflow Challenges

Check all issues that impact your control room operators:


21.7 Security, Network Architecture & Compliance

Kav AI utilizes a read-only, security-first integration architecture to guarantee that no control actions can be back-propagated into your OT environment.

21.7.1 Security Posture

  • Is there physical and logical OT/IT network segmentation? [ ] Yes [ ] No
  • Is there a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) with a firewall between OT and IT? [ ] Yes [ ] No
  • Firewall Vendor(s) in Use: ____________________________________________
  • Do you allow outbound-only connections to secure cloud platforms? [ ] Yes [ ] No

21.7.2 Cybersecurity & Industry Standards

Check all standards that apply to your utility’s cybersecurity profile:


21.8 Data Governance & Sovereignty

  • Are there geographical residency requirements for your operational data? __________________________________________________________________________

  • Is your utility subject to Public Records Acts (e.g., FOIA) that affect data storage? __________________________________________________________________________

  • What is your mandatory data retention period for historical telemetry and logs? __________________________________________________________________________


21.9 Operational Metrics (ROI Baseline)

To measure the ROI of the Kav AI platform, we establish a baseline using your historical metrics. Estimates are acceptable where precise figures are unavailable.

  • Unplanned Plant / Lift Station Downtime Incidents per Year: ______________
  • Average Duration of an Unplanned Outage (Hours): ______________________
  • Estimated Cost per Hour of System Outage (e.g., fines, bypass pumping): ___
  • Number of Emergency Field Callouts (Roll-offs) per Month: ________________
  • Number of Sanitary Sewer Overflows (SSOs) / CSOs in the past 12 months: ___
  • Percentage of Maintenance Budget Spent on Reactive / Emergency Repairs: _____%
  • Annual Cost of Overtime due to Emergency Callouts: _____________________

21.10 Inspection Practices & Sensor Capabilities

21.10.1 Inspection Methods

Check all methods currently used to assess asset integrity and process performance:

21.10.2 Asset Monitoring Equipment Inventory

Please list equipment owned or contracted:

  • CCTV Sewer Crawlers: __________________________________________________
  • Thermal / IR Cameras: _________________________________________________
  • Handheld / Portable Gas Detectors: _____________________________________
  • On-line Water Quality Analyzers (turbidity, pH, free chlorine, etc.): _________________________________________________

21.11 Goals & Strategic Objectives

Rank your top priorities for implementing Kav AI (1 = highest priority, 12 = lowest):

Objective Priority (1-12)
Prevent Sanitary Sewer Overflows (SSOs) & Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs)
Ensure strict drinking water quality standard compliance (SDWA)
Reduce chemical dosing costs through advanced analytics
Optimize pump energy consumption and reduce peak demand fees
Detect pump clogging and ragging events before motor damage
Minimize control room operator alarm fatigue and nuisance alerts
Elevate situational awareness during storm events (Storm Watch)
Monitor backup generator readiness and automatic transfer switches
Centralize visibility across dozens of remote pump/lift stations
Enable predictive maintenance on critical aeration blowers & high-service pumps
Move from scheduled physical rounds to AI-driven exception rounds
Build interactive 3D digital twins of water resource recovery facilities

21.12 Regulatory Compliance

Check all applicable environmental, health, and safety regulatory requirements:


21.13 IT & Enterprise Integration

  • Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) / CMMS (e.g., Cityworks, Lucity, Maximo): __________________________________________________________________________

  • Geographic Information System (GIS) (e.g., Esri ArcGIS): __________________________________________________________________________

  • Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS): __________________________________________________________________________

  • Do you require Single Sign-On (SSO) integration (SAML 2.0 / OIDC)? __________________________________________________________________________


21.14 Proposed Pilot Scope

Help us define a highly focused pilot deployment to demonstrate immediate value:

  • Target Pilot Location (e.g., Main Pump Station + 5 critical remote Lift Stations): __________________________________________________________________________

  • Primary Asset(s) to Monitor (e.g., 4 High-Service Pumps, 2 Aeration Blowers): __________________________________________________________________________

  • Specific Problem to Solve in the Pilot: (e.g., “Detect pump ragging anomalies and trigger alarm 4 hours before thermal overload occurs”) __________________________________________________________________________

  • Target Start Date & Proposed Pilot Duration (e.g., 90 days): __________________________________________________________________________

  • Key Stakeholders for Pilot Evaluation: __________________________________________________________________________


21.15 Submission & Sign-off

By submitting this onboarding questionnaire, I confirm that the information provided represents our operational goals and infrastructure to the best of my knowledge.

  • Printed Name & Title: __________________________________________________
  • Authorized Signature: __________________________________________________
  • Date: __________________________

Please return the completed document to your Kav AI Solutions Architect at info@kavai.com.