The McKim & Creed team evaluated five of the most widely used SCADA Human Machine Interface (HMI) software platforms and submitted an evaluation report of the findings with recommendations to Hillsborough County. The evaluation was performed to provide the County with a basis for determining if an upgrade to its HMI software is required, and which of the available software platforms would best support the County’s management of its water and wastewater utilities.
To evaluate the software platforms, we quantified the size and complexity of the current County SCADA system. Each of the vendors was contacted to submit budgetary proposals for the project complete with supporting information about the software’s future road map, architectures, key features and functionality. McKim & Creed met with each vendor individually to discuss their approach to the project and specifics about their software. We met with County SCADA staff to identify current and future needs, improvements, problems and additional functionality desired for the new SCADA system and this information was used to develop a list of minimum requirements that the software packages were compared against. A formal scoring system was developed to evaluate the best software packages based on this information and scores were assigned. Items included in the scoring were functionality, licensing, technology, interoperability, software structure, support and the total cost of ownership going out 10 years.
Finally, a thorough report was developed detailing the evaluation process and results. This report was presented to the utilities director, assistant director and SCADA manager to explain the process and address questions.