Get SMART ! - Managing and monitoring your built water system.

Being SMART

We all like to think we're smart. Smart enough to know when things aren't quite right. The Acronym SMART is a useful tool for working out your system management and monitoring your system IQ. It follows on from the Hierarchy of Control in identifying what needs to be done to monitor what you have in place.

Image Courtesy: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/GetSmart

The SMART acronym is primarily used in systems management and at first glance has nothing to do with built water systems. So what do the letters stand for?

Let me translate it into a Water Safety context. Keep the first letters and the essence of the content and you have the basis of understanding monitoring your system!

A Health Risk version of the same acronym goes like this:

SMART

Sensitive - your monitoring system must be able to cope with the demands of regulation. If the regs. require 100 cfu /L then a quick colour change on a test strip is not exactly helpful!

Measurable - anything you do must be recordable, if it's not measurable you're in trouble. This extends to written records of flushing times date and persons. It's not just that you used a thermometer!

Accurate - if your monitoring system can't give you some certainty that the results on your desk represent the real world you may be in trouble. This is different to sensitive - ask yourself 'how confident am I in this result?'

Reproducible - the control point measured and sampled twice on the same event must be consistent.

Timely - there's no point collecting data on what happened a week ago if you want to pro-actively manage your system.

'Ay, there's the rub!'

Ref: (Shakespeare - Hamlet)

It's all looking pretty easy so far but there is 'the rub' also known as the 'spanner in the works'. None of the SMART monitoring criteria listed above apply to Legionella testing, even less so for Mycobacteria, Pseudomonas or other emerging nasties.

Legionella testing is notoriously insensitive. So you can't really expect to get truly measurable results - and what results you get are not accurate. Send the same sample to 3 different labs. and you will get 3 different results. Studies in Europe and Australia have demonstrated that nationally accredited testing laboratories could not provide reproducible results from known pre-seeded samples. Timely is not in Legionella vocabulary - wait 10 days to see if you have a problem. So sadly it falls at every fence!

Oh No! What do I do?

Get SMART! a rather simple solution! Look at the things in your system that you can be SMART about. If you have a waters risk management plan you should already know what they are. Servicing of appliances, routine plant room checks, routine disinfection, temperature checks, flushing outlets. All of these can be SMARTly used to manage and monitor your system - provided you keep a record. As I've said before 'if its not recorded it did'nt happen'.

But what about Legionella Testing?

Legionella sampling is not SMART - but it is useful. It's quite likely that Legionella sampling is a requirement in your jurisdiction. There is nothing wrong with that. It's about context. A routine microbial sampling and monitoring program can be used to confirm that what you're doing is working. In terms of a risk management plan this is called verification or validation.

About Us

All of the areas mentioned above are what we specialize in. Our business delivers industry leading processes, systems, training and support as well as market leading disinfection products that will enable you to manage and reduce risk of waterborne infection. We are an ISO accredited business and hold Systems, Safety and Environmental certification, please feel free to contact us if you would like to talk more.