Justifying SCADA Projects

SCADA projects frequently support strategic initiatives not focused on purely economic benefits. However, many utilities often look first to an economic return on investment (ROI) analysis to justify projects. Experience shows that using an economic evaluation, such as an ROI analysis, will often fall short of providing adequate justification to proceed on an automation project.

Most water/wastewater utility executives are quite familiar with calculating savings due to tangible benefits such as labor savings, energy savings, chemical costs, reduction in fines and other quantifiable factors. But difficulties often arise when trying to quantify intangible benefits such as increased reliability, emergency response capabilities, avoided cost due to enhanced maintenance, improved operations, business process improvement and better regulatory compliance.