An Automated Web-Based Approach To Backflow Prevention Administration

By Dan Wellisch
Wellisch Software Technologies, Inc.

Using the Internet as a backbone, backflow prevention inspection reporting can be streamlined into a simple, efficient business process, thereby saving time and money. This article outlines a proposed system based on such an approach, which we'll call Backflow Web.

Typical Existing Backflow Procedures And Their Associated Problems (Municipality Perspective)
Test inspectors fax or mail their testing reports, which are hand written or printed on their own specific forms, into municipalities to be data-entered or filed. If municipalities data enter the reports, they are likely to make errors, given that the forms are all different (depending on the inspector who performed the test) and may have been illegibly completed (if by hand). Furthermore, data entry is time consuming. The more devices that are to be inspected in the field, the higher the strain on municipality staff. Costs for staff are directly proportional to the number of backflow devices requiring record keeping.

Municipalities spend considerable time calling customers and inspectors in order to determine why municipality staffs haven't received test reports. This takes up a very high percentage of backflow administration time and money. Municipality staffs often must call parties three or more times before a satisfactory answer is received. Until an administrator gets on the phone and reaches the appropriate party, they do not know where the bottleneck lies. It could be that the customer hasn't gotten around to hiring an inspector, or that the inspector just hasn't sent in the test report yet.

Mailing customer notices, repeat notices, and shutoff letters is labor intensive. And administration of surveys incurs similar data entry labor as well as customer communication issues.

Current backflow processes are inconvenient for customers, as they must call each inspector to get a test inspection quote, thereby repeating their request for every phone call. And they must track down test inspection companies in order to find out why their test results have not been mailed to the municipality.

Existing procedures also limit opportunities for inspectors to bid on customer Requests for Proposal (RFPs).

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