WALNUT CREEK, Calif. — Leading environmental engineering and construction firm Brown and Caldwell today announces the launch of BC:Opta™, its unique approach to utility optimization for a more effective future.

Faced with challenges from aging assets, drought, storm surges, and increasing regulations to replacing skills of a retiring workforce and budget limitations, improving utility performance for short- and long-term success is an ongoing prospect for utilities.

The BC:Opta approach encompasses a three-part framework: people+technology+adoption, beginning with Brown and Caldwell’s deep subject matter expertise and, if applicable, employing proven or innovative technologies. The key step involves empowering a utility’s lasting adoption of an optimized solution to fully realize immediate impacts and improved performance.

Powered by process and utility performance expertise; and often supported by advanced analytics, automation technologies, and digital twins, BC:Opta outcomes include:

• Operational performance: Reduced energy and chemical usage; better process strategies; enhanced resource utilization; expanded plant capacities; and cost-effective, sustainable performance improvements across operations.
• Infrastructure strategy: Comprehensive asset and maintenance management; capital program delivery; and enhanced data management strategies to achieve improved asset life and cost of ownership at risk levels acceptable to customers, communities, and regulators.
• Enterprise resiliency: Improved business processes, employee skills development, integrated planning across utility functions, management strategy, and knowledge retention.

By embracing BC:Opta, utilities have a unique opportunity to enhance processes, shift expenditures, better align staff resources, and meet evolving customer needs as outlined by Brown and Caldwell Utility Performance Practice Lead Jeff Theerman:

“As an industry, we know we need to get better, but how should we do it? It’s not that we must do more with less; it’s that we must do more with the same capital, operating budgets, and staff. The answer is in optimization.”

More information, and examples of BC:Opta in action at water and wastewater facilities, can be found here.