Projects

Okaloosa County Advanced Metering Infrastructure Installation Services & IT Integration

Delivering a digital transformation along Florida’s Emerald Coast

Okaloosa County

Okaloosa County Water & Sewer (OCWS) serves over 50,000 residents primarily in Fort Walton Beach, Florida in a popular vacation spot on Florida’s panhandle known as the “Emerald Coast”.

OCWS contracted with Jacobs to provide procurement services for their advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) implementation, as well as consulting assistance on request during the implementation project.

  • 50 K

    customers in the region, 35K now with AMI

  • ~ 25 K

    new meters installed

Making 1 of the most popular Floridian tourist locations smarter

Our scope of work on the OCWS project included installation and programming of approximately 30,500 Meter Transceiver Units (MXU) and installation of approximately 24,750 new water meters; along with installation of valves, boxes, composite lids and new dual check valves to complete a fixed network AMI upgrade.

The project also consists of managing the electronic work order creation through completion while interfacing with OCWS’s Customer Information & Billing System. All meter locations involved in the project require the capture of pictures and GPS coordinates.

We wrote the specification for the scope of work used in the RFP and advised on the technical review of the vendor proposals. A prequalification process was used to identify the best candidates and determine a short list and a quantitative, defensible scoring method was applied to the proposal reviews.

Jacobs provided OCWS a specification for this work that included quality control, customer communications, detailed requirements for interface development and data management, and extensive descriptions of the five different installation scenarios for the vendor’s bid. We outlined performance standards based on our prior AMI experience, knowledge of best practices and lessons learned from past projects, as well as associated penalties to be assessed the contractor for failing to meet those standards.