Sabesp, the largest water and wastewater company in Latin America, found itself facing a major water crisis in 2015. As the main provider of water distribution, collection, and wastewater treatment for more than 360 cities in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, this crisis resulted in a significant increase in inquiries from customers who rely on Sabesp’s integrated system for their water and wastewater needs.

As the company struggled to keep up with the volume of service calls while maintaining operations, Sabesp began identifying inefficiencies in its processes, seeking a partner to streamline operations and ensure quality service for residents of the region. This is where the Stefanini Group came in.

COMPANY INFORMATION

Founded: 1973
Employees: 12,000
Industry: Energy and Utilities

Situation:

Sabesp, one of the world’s largest water and wastewater companies, is responsible for water distribution, collection, and wastewater treatment in more than 360 cities in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, a region with scarce water resources. With its rugged terrain and fewer reservoirs than the United Nations typically recommends, the region relies heavily on Sabesp’s integrated metropolitan system for all its water-related needs.

Challenge:

When the state of São Paulo faced a major water crisis in 2015, Sabesp saw its customer inquiries increase rapidly, and the volume of these calls made it difficult for the company to maintain operations during an already volatile time.

This led Sabesp to begin identifying inefficiencies in its processes, opening the door to a new system with the potential to improve operational efficiency and ensure a reliable supply of drinking water for residents of the São Paulo metropolitan area.

With a long list of requirements for this solution, including the ability to provide an integrated sanitation cycle analysis, the company finally turned to the Stefanini Group.

With its legacy systems, Sabesp was already receiving a lot of data from its remote team. Working in collaboration with Stefanini, the company was able to implement an interface to collect this data and transfer it to a PI System, increasing access to real-time information and packaging it behind a customizable, user-friendly dashboard.

This allowed engineers and managers across the company to easily retrieve and understand information related to the condition of pipelines, pumping stations, and reservoirs. The system also simplified data modeling and automated incident reporting, making it easier for engineers and maintenance teams to take preventative measures when needed.

Results:

Following the implementation of the new PI System, Sabesp saw a:

• 967% increase in the number of monitored assets
• Corrective maintenance needs decreased by 7%.
• Customer complaints about water shortages decreased by 5%.

According to a company satisfaction survey, Stefanini’s efforts also had a positive impact on customer experiences.

• Sabesp satisfaction scores increased by 22%.

From setting up servers to collect data from multiple interfaces to organizing 100,000 tags across more than 270 different asset types, Stefanini made implementing the custom PI System simple so Sabesp could focus on what it does best: providing water and sanitation services to more than 25 million people in the São Paulo region.