Mei Carmel Ltd was established as a water and sewage corporate of Haifa municipality in 2010. NRW at that time was 17%. During the first 3 years Mei Carmel invested around 300 million NIS by replacing pipes, new flow meters etc. Unexpectedly, NRW went down only to 15.9% and the P&L report still showed significant losses. Therefore we had to change our approach and way of thinking to really quickly overcome the NRW problem. Among other measures, we decided to test solutions of permanent networks for leak detection. Besides GUTERMANN we tested companies from Germany and the UK. The decision making process took into account that for our large network it is crucial to operate very efficiently with minimum work around the system. We decided to proceed with GUTERMANN after finding them more effective and efficient especially considering the scalability requirements for large networks as we have.
We had 3 installation phases and today we have around 1100 measurement points covering a large part of Haifa. ROI of each of the installations was very quick, within no more than few months. The GUTERMANN system is very convenient to operate, relatively clear, and after learning it it does not require much time from the operator. The engineer responsible for system in Haifa spends only a short time every day so most of the day she is available to handle her other responsibilities. Currently NRW is around 7-8% (mostly administrative) and the GUTERMANN system was certainly instrumental in this achievement.
Stav Avraham,
Chief Operating Officer, Mei Carmel (Haifa waterworks)
