Professional Smart Meter Installation and Management

Our experienced team of operations managers, project managers, construction managers, engineers, and onsite technicians deliver high-quality work and meet deadlines and budgets, all with minimal disruption to customer operations. Comprehensive project management planning involves scheduling, auditing, job site management, metrics development and analysis, and detailed close-out documentation. We can replace anywhere from a handful of meters to 100,000 meters or more.

During the project, the construction manager remains onsite to facilitate the work crews, manage schedules, and communicate with directly with the customer. Our entire team understands the big picture and leaves no stone unturned.

We schedule and map around billing cycles to ensure we do not interrupt existing meter readings, which can result in billing inaccuracies. We use existing meter reading routes to alleviate billing system issues and enable us to track where installation crews are in real time.

Our construction manager tracks inventory and assigns inventory pieces to each crew, ensuring they maintain their inventory while on the truck until it is installed into service. These pieces are serialized and can be verified after each installation. Daily encrypted installation data, including photos, are stored on a secure server and are part of every meter installation.

Meters located indoors require detailed coordination. Our installation crews accommodate schedules for all water-critical accounts (e.g., schools, medical facilities, and third-shift production facilities).

We use the following five-step procedure to install new water meters:

1. Take a pre-installation exterior photo of the pit area and its immediate surroundings.
2. Remove the pit lid and take pre-installation pit photos to capture the valve position (on/off) and preexisting pit conditions.
3. Take photos of old meter serial numbers and old meter reads and take photos of new meter serial numbers and new transmitter serial numbers.
4. Turn water off, remove the old meter, install the new meter, and turn water back on.
5. Take photos of new meter activation to verify the valve is on and the meter is installed with proper flow direction, then take photos of the post-installation exterior of the pit area and immediate surroundings.

For every meter replacement and installation, we digitally document the following information:

• Address
• Old serial number
• Old register end reading
• Install date and time
• New serial number
• New register reading

Our team in the field uses iPads to record GPS coordinates. We can also use professional-grade GPS collection systems, where appropriate.

Our internal IT team manages project data—billing, quality control, customer service, and scheduling—using our Smart Installation Management System (SIMS). We use a customer-accessible proprietary web portal that manages the data collection, pictures, GPS coordinates, quality control, commissioning, and data transfer. This web portal integrates with customers’ billing systems.

We always verify proper installation using SIMS. Photo verification of the following is standard in the SIMS quality control process for each meter installed:

• Flow direction of the new meter
• Service valve position before and after installation
• Site conditions before and after installation

Our web portal and SIMS provide the tools and processes needed to ensure new water meter systems and individual water meters are working. Our installers use iPad handheld devices that communicate with SIMS. We also conduct quality control checks on all our installations to confirm meter sizes, quantities, and quality. SIMS then creates batch files for incorporation into the billing system.