Societe Polynesienne des Eaux et de l'assainissement

The CITI, Centre International des Techniques de l'Information (International Center for Information Techniques), is in charge, within the Lyonnaise des Eaux, of coordinating the group's strategy in terms of automation and supervision. Within the framework of its supervision application designing missions, it is particularly committed to the initial requirements definition stage and user control over tools. This approach is sensible, when it is difficult to pick up the phone to provide detailed adjustments, and the implementation in 1998 of the Papeete drinking water production supervision is a perfect example.

After the carefully led preliminary studies (remote information plan, synoptic diagrams, processes), CITI performed a major part of the parameter setting work. Then, a local technician spent a dozen days near Paris to perfect his training by attending actively the parameter setting finish work, the real size tests (yes, it is possible to perform these preliminary tests by connecting the Paris supervisor with the Tahiti remote management stations), and by performing a "dummy" full installation on a blank PC: no Windows system, no supervisor, no application.

One of the key elements of success of such an operation is the proper control by the technicians of the PC's environment: should there be a problem on the site, emergency staff is not always readily available.

After ten days spent in France, the local technician returned confidently to the other side of the World. Unfortunately - and outside circumstances often interfere with the best of programs-, we must admit that he was unable to perform this installation on his own because of setbacks and lead time constraints.

But, since start-up, he has been on his own, despairing the other technicians who would just love to make the trip to help him out.