Case Study
Water Data Infrastructure

Data Historian & Reporting Solution

Unifying 14,000 trend tags across 60,000 km² into a single enterprise intelligence platform.

Project Reference
2025T002C
Handover Date
June 2026
60,000 km²
Coverage Area Served
30,000
Residents Supported
14,000
Trend Tags Consolidated
13
SCADA Systems, Plants & Network
“Single Pane of Glass, a unified enterprise view for site operators and management teams, eliminating data silos across 13 standalone AVEVA Plant SCADA systems.”

Project Overview

The Centralised Data Acquisition and Reporting Historian project (Ref: 2025T002C) was a greenfield initiative by the Central Highlands Regional Council (CHRC) to unify operational data across its vast water and wastewater network. Covering approximately 60,000 km² and serving up to 30,000 people, the project consolidated 14,000 trend tags from 13 geographically distributed SCADA sites into a single, enterprise-grade intelligence platform.

Operational Benefits & Use Cases

Single Source of Truth
Operational, engineering, management and business users can now access the same trusted operational data through a central platform, improving visibility, collaboration, analysis and operational decision-making.
Automated Reporting
Automated compliance and operational reporting, SWIMS submissions, pump performance, flow totals and level monitoring, now produced from a centralised platform, reducing data gathering time and freeing focus for operational improvement.
Future Analytics & AI Ready
Established a scalable foundation for dashboards, optimisation initiatives and future AI-driven insights.

The Challenge: Data Fragmentation & Compliance Risk

Prior to implementation, CHRC faced critical operational hurdles. Each of the 13 plants operated a standalone AVEVA Plant SCADA system with no interconnection:

Restricted Visibility
Process data trapped on-site, no enterprise-level analysis or benchmarking possible.
Regulatory Risk
Local historians held only short-term history, hampering long-term audit trails and seasonal reporting.
Manual Reporting
Time-consuming extraction from 13 individual sites increased errors and operational burden.
Operational Inefficiency
No real-time network context prevented early fault detection and proactive KPI tracking.

Other Key Challenges

During the project, Parasyn successfully navigated technical hurdles by proactively identifying network bandwidth constraints and infrastructure readiness risks, mitigating them through strategic testing, hardware sizing, and data optimisation. Additionally, to overcome challenges with incomplete reporting requirements and inconsistent source tag names, the team leveraged standardised KPI frameworks and developed a unified data model, providing a solid foundation for future asset hierarchy standardisation.

Network Bandwidth
To mitigate network bandwidth constraints identified during the design phase, Parasyn developed detailed cutover plans and performed communication testing, optimising scan rates, reducing data redundancy, and tuning collection algorithms to minimise deployment risk.
Inconsistent Tag Names
Parasyn partially mitigated inconsistent tag naming conventions by building a data model within the reporting platform to standardise report generation, establishing a foundation for a future standard asset hierarchy.
Infrastructure Readiness
Risks were identified early through detailed hardware sizing, storage assessments, and OS reviews. Staging and testing the selected infrastructure internally prior to shipment reduced commissioning risk and accelerated site deployment.
Reporting Requirements Gathering
Limited stakeholder availability and varying KPI understanding were addressed by leveraging standard industry templates and subject matter expertise from past council deployments to define metrics, reports, and practical use cases.
“Recommendations have been provided to establish and maintain a standard asset hierarchy across systems. The data model developed as part of this project can serve as a foundation for future standardisation activities.”

The Solution: Integrated Industrial Intelligence

Systems Engineering Approach. A key contributor to the project's success was the application of a structured Systems Engineering & Management Process (SEMP). Detailed design reviews, cutover planning, internal testing, formal test procedures, and stakeholder workshops were undertaken throughout the project lifecycle. This disciplined approach enabled challenges to be identified early, risks to be proactively managed, and practical solutions implemented without impacting delivery timelines.

The systems engineering process also provided the framework for identifying and addressing challenges related to network bandwidth constraints, infrastructure readiness, reporting requirements development, and data standardisation, ensuring these issues were resolved systematically throughout the project.

Validation & Quality Assurance. Parasyn implemented a comprehensive Quality Test Plan (QTP) to verify system performance, reliability, and readiness prior to operational handover:

  • Mimic period, a mandatory two-week “ghosting” period to verify system stability during public holidays and peak operational times.
  • Contractual validation, formal Data Acquisition validation for all 13 sites to ensure 100% data fidelity.
  • Performance stress testing, concurrent multi-user access tests to validate system response times under heavy load.

Lessons Learned, Insights & Future Recommendations

Connectivity Surveys
Early coordination is essential for sites with mixed network profiles (fibre vs 4G) to avoid mid-project surprises.
Phased Rollout
A phased roadmap allows user training and data governance to mature alongside the technical deployment.
Future Growth
Foundation is set for AI-based anomaly detection, AMI integration, and transition to cloud-based analytics.
Validation Rigour
A mandatory two-week ghosting/mimic period confirmed system stability across public holidays and peak loads.

Project Outcomes & Handover

The project concluded with a formal handover in June 2026, unifying all 13 connected sites into a single enterprise platform and meeting every contractual milestone.

Technical Success
100% greenfield build unifying 14,000 trend tags from 13 SCADA sites into one platform, with capacity for over 100,000 tags.
Validation Rigour
A mandatory two-week mimic period confirmed system stability across public holidays and peak operational loads before go-live.
Future Ready
Automated compliance and operational reporting now in place, establishing a scalable foundation for AI-driven insights and analytics.