In her paper presentation "Using SAS® Enterprise Guide® to Provide Water and Conserve Electricity for SAS® Global Forum Attendees" Cecelia Adair, Senior Operations Support Manager for the Las Vegas Valley Water District (LVVWD), explained how the LVVWD uses SAS® software to manage and maintain water and energy usage in Clark County, Nevada.
The LVVWD is a not-for-profit agency chartered under the state of Nevada to supply water to unincorporated Clark County and the city of Las Vegas. LVVWD delivers 80 percent of the water in the Las Vegas Valley, which is 107 billion gallons per year.
Since the early 1990s, a rapidly increasing population in Clark County and an ongoing drought created added strain on the already aging water facilities.
“As the responsible water delivery agency, we’re in the middle of two opposing forces, finding the balance that makes it all work,” Adair said.
In 2003, the LVVWD’s Asset Management Division was created to plan for the rehabilitation and replacement of existing water district facilities. The next year, LVVWD began using the SAS Water Demand Model through SAS Enterprise Guide to project water usage.
“A water utility may not be your first thought for a company that can make use of the power of SAS software,” Adair said. “Admittedly, we aren’t creating models of our systems or creating marketing campaigns and testing their effectiveness, but Enterprise Guide software is an extremely useful tool in our environment, helping us to know more about our business and to make improvements.”
The Asset Management Division currently uses SAS Enterprise Guide to reduce facility rehabilitation guesswork, decrease failures in service lines, prevent revenue loss and conserve energy by establishing a yearly water audit.
Adair concluded with advice for attendees. “Enterprise Guide software makes a huge difference for our organization, and it can for yours too,” Adair said. “If you haven’t ventured far with it yet, make that effort by solving one problem at a time. Learn a new feature or task each time you take on a new project.”
