Legionella Management System (LeMa)
Case Study

Background

Aegis Water Treatment are a privately owned, independent air and water environmental services contractor based in Tamworth, Staffordshire. They offer an outsourced solution for the monitoring and maintenance of air and water systems, in particular to ensure their customers are fully compliant with legislation on prevention of Legionnaires' disease.

Aegis have grown steadily since they were founded in 1998 and have many leading organisations in their customer base across lots of diverse sectors including education, leisure & entertainment, power generation, manufacturing & engineering and building and facilities management.

Aegis is also one of the few companies of its type to operate an in-house engineering facility that trains and develops its own highly-qualified electrical and mechanical engineers.

Legionella Prevention

Managing the prevention of Legionella typically involved a service contract where either the customer or Aegis would make regular checks of key outlets on the water system. As Legionella multiplies generally between 20 and 50 degrees Celsius, this means ensuring that tested cold water outlets were below 20 degrees and hot water outlets above 50 degrees once up to temperature.

At the start of a contract Aegis would conduct a full survey of every site, identify each asset in the various water systems, produce system schematics, identify sentinel outlets (those nearest and furthest from the water supply) and do initial checks amongst many other tasks. In addition, there would often be site surveys conducted every six months with full risk assessment visits every two years.

Where a check or test doesn't meet the legislative requirements a non-conformance is recorded and Aegis then take the necessary steps to correct the non-conformance. This may ultimately require a site visit to perform associated engineering work if the fault lies within some part of the water system itself.

All checks and tests have to be formally recorded and kept for several years.

Specification

As the customer base had grown so had the burden of keeping accurate records, and staff numbers needed to increase in line. Although Aegis kept computerised records using Microsoft Office it became apparent that only a dedicated system would really provide the efficiency and cost saving benefits required.

After looking at a couple of other systems that didn't fully meet Aegis' needs, Aegis decided to approach Perceptis to discuss the development of a bespoke system.

In order to be sure they fully understood the requirement, Perceptis spent several half days with Aegis, going through all the processes involved and documenting them in detail. Out of this work Perceptis and Aegis were able to jointly develop a specification for the new system.

Because the system required Aegis staff, customer management and remote customer staff at each site to access the system, the system needed to be a web application which could be used from anywhere with an internet connection, needing only a browser to be installed on the computer being used.

Perceptis then set about estimating the work and timescales involved before presenting Aegis with a fixed price quotation to develop the system to the agreed specification. Aegis then commissioned Perceptis to develop the system.

It was decided to call the system LeMa (Legionella Management).

Development Process

LeMa was developed in iterative phases over a six month period, going live in summer 2008. Perceptis worked closely with Aegis and regular meetings were held to review each phase and set priorities for the next phase.

This close collaboration and building of the system in iterations meant that Aegis were able to be sure the system was progressing well and this quickly gained their full confidence. The regular meetings also were used to 'iron out' any minor changes needed to the system where the specification may have been slightly misinterpreted or new challenges had emerged.

Although the system was tested at the end of each iteration it is was put through a full formal testing plan designed to ensure every line of code was executed prior to its initial deployment.

Dynamic Check/Test Schedule

The LeMa system allows Aegis to be able to enter every customer site, the buildings and water systems at those sites and every asset on each water system. By doing this LeMa becomes a complete asset register for the site.

Using a system of flexible rules, which can be changed without reprogramming, the system knows which checks and tests should be done on each asset and what the frequency of those checks should be. Using this information LeMa is able to build a dynamic schedule of the checks and tests to be done.

Where the customer's staff are responsible for carrying out weekly and monthly checks, LeMa sends eMail reminders when checks are due. Customer site personnel have unique logins that allow them to see all the checks due for their site and are able to print off check sheets that they can write on as they go round testing the relevant water system outlets. Following this, site personnel can then login again and enter the results of each check/test.

Where a check fails to meet the required standard or no check is done by the due date, LeMa will automatically raise a non-conformance. Aegis personnel work permanently logged into the system and receive notification of non-conformances in real time. As a daily task Aegis staff will deal with each non-conformance raised that day. In some cases a retest is all that is needed to solve the problem, but where the problem is caused by a fault in the underlying water system, engineering work may be scheduled.

Site Status & Management Reports

At any time, a colour coding system makes it possible to identify which sites, water systems and assets have outstanding non-conformances and it is very simple to 'drill down' to the cause of the non-conformance. Check history and water temperature trend information can be viewed at any time which really helps to identify long term trends.

As LeMa keeps a full audit trail of every check done, both Aegis and the customer can provide evidence to show proper testing routines are in place and moreover, are actually being carried out.

A wealth of management reports are available which make it easy for each customer manager to see in a few seconds how the sites under the manager's control are performing in terms of non-conformances as well as verifying that site personnel are conducting full and regular checks.

Site Surveys & Risk Assessments

LeMa also manages the schedule of site surveys and risk assessments, helping Aegis plan and manage the deployment of their engineers.

LeMa includes a secure document server that allows electronic copies of engineers' test sheets, site schematics etc. to be stored and recalled at any time.

Deployment

The system is deployed in several of Aegis' contracts totalling over 500 remote sites. Due to thorough testing it has performed flawlessly and already several enhancements have been made to add even more functionality based on a wish list of customers and Aegis requests.

Further Developments

Further developments to the system are planned in the coming year as part of a process of continual development and improvement.