The Water and Wastewater sector is facing a major profitability challenge: the cost of on-site failures. When a field work order fails due to a lack of spare parts or technical skills, the entire value chain suffers. The consequences are measured in:

Multiple truck rolls,
Equipment downtime,
Breaches in service continuity,
Degradation of contractual performance indicators.

In a context where contractual penalties punish malfunctions and pricing pressure limits margins, every failed work orders weighs directly on the profitability of private operators and public utilities. The First Time Fix Rate (FTFR) is becoming a strategic KPI, capable of making or breaking a contract.

How does remote visual support help achieve a 100% success rate on the first try? How does it transform curative maintenance into cognitive maintenance?

1. Remote visual support pre-diagnostics: qualifying incidents to secure field work order

The operational reality

Too many crews are dispatched to report leaks, lift station failures, or telemetry malfunctions with sketchy information. The on-call team receives a call: “Major leak on Main Street.” The technician loads their van with an assortment of repair clamps, a few couplings, a multi-purpose valve key, and heads out.

Once on-site, they discover a leak on a cast iron pipe, while they packed materials for PVC. Access to the valve box is blocked by illegal parking. The isolation valve is a specific gate valve model. The result: return to base, new work order scheduled, delayed service restoration, and double the cost.

This scenario repeats daily across hundreds of thousands of miles of drinking water and sewer networks. Every “blank” or incomplete work order hampers team productivity and degrades service continuity indicators.

The solution: “See What I See” before dispatch

Remote visual support transforms incident qualification. As soon as the call comes in, the dispatcher or operations supervisor can ask the reporter to activate their camera via a secure link. This reporter can be a customer, a municipal worker, or a third-party operator. No app installation is required.

In seconds, the operations center visualizes the real situation:

The flow of the leak,
The condition of the pavement,
The immediate environment.

More importantly, they identify the critical technical characteristics that will condition the success of the work order.

Concrete applications in the Water and Wastewater sector

For potable water networks

The supervisor checks the pipe diameter. They note the material, such as ductile iron, PVC, or HDPE. Then, they evaluate access to the nearest valve box/manhole. They can ask the reporter to film the meter. This helps identify the brand and model (e.g., Sensus, Itron). This information is crucial if the work order requires a replacement.

For pumping and lift stations

The agent visualizes the electrical panel, identifies the type of VFD (Variable Frequency Drive), spots displayed error codes, and evaluates the condition of the check valve. This information helps diagnose an electrical or mechanical failure remotely. It also ensures the truck is stocked with the right parts: contactor, level probe, or pump impeller.

For sewage lift stations

Video pre-diagnostics allow the team to:

Evaluate the fill level of the wet well,
Check the operation of the float switches,
Identify an obstruction in the screen basket.

The technician thus knows if they need to bring a hydro-excavator/jetting truck or if the job requires simple electromechanical maintenance.

Measurable operational results

The technician leaves with the right hardware, the right spare parts, and the right specific tooling. This massively eliminates “No Fault Found” (work orders where no defect is found) and wasted trips due to incorrect equipment. Consequently:

The First Time Fix Rate increases.
Work order costs decrease.
User satisfaction improves thanks to shorter service restoration times.

2. Augmented collaboration: placing the remote expert at the heart of Water & Wastewater action

The context: increasing installation complexity

Water and sanitation infrastructure has undergone a technological revolution over the last twenty years. Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTP) now integrate complex PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers), online analyzers (pH, turbidity, COD), and connected SCADA systems. Pumping stations are equipped with VFDs, soft starters, and GSM/GPRS telemetry. Smart water networks differ with pressure sensors, electromagnetic flowmeters, and piloted sectorization systems.

This technological sophistication challenges generalist technicians. The temptation is strong to call the manufacturer or the engineering firm directly, with the delays and costs that implies.

Meanwhile, internal experts – process engineers, electrotechnical managers, instrumentation specialists – are few and in high demand. They cannot travel to every complex failure without paralyzing their own management and optimization activities.

The solution: remote visual support with augmented reality

Visual assistance transforms the isolated technician into an augmented duo. On-site, facing a complex installation, they activate their smartphone camera. In seconds, they are in a secure video link with the expert at technical headquarters or the engineering center.

The expert sees exactly what the technician sees. They have access to advanced collaboration features:

Virtual laser pointer to precisely designate a component on the technician’s screen,
Augmented reality annotations to circle a circuit breaker or trace a cable route,
Image freeze to annotate a complex wiring diagram.

Scaling rare expertise without multiplying experts

This ability to make experts “ubiquitous” transforms operational organization. A process engineer can support three complex work orders simultaneously or successively in the same day, without leaving the office. Their expertise, instead of being limited to the sites they can physically visit, becomes available for the entire service territory.

For operators managing multiple treatment plants, sharing expertise is vital. It helps optimize their workforce. It allows them to maintain a high level of facility availability without proportionally increasing the number of experts—a rare and expensive resource.

The operational result is measured in:

Immediate resolution rates,
Reduction in asset downtime,
Decreased reliance on external emergency contractors,
And ultimately, improvement in regulatory performance indicators (plant availability rates, effluent compliance rates).

3. Archives and knowledge base: transforming every failure into a future resource

This dimension constitutes the core of the sustainability and collective upskilling strategy. It is no longer just about fixing it once, but learning forever. Each work order becomes a capitalized, structured knowledge brick accessible for future jobs.

Creating a visual library of field work orders

Automatic archiving functionality transforms every visual assistance session into an informational asset. Concretely, every video, every photo taken during the call, and every shared document is archived. This includes schematics, blueprints, and data sheets. Everything is stored in a secure space compliant with data privacy regulations (GDPR/CCPA).

The business advantage is significant. No more technical photos lost in technicians’ personal phones, deleted when changing devices, or lost when an employee leaves. No more illegible or lost handwritten logbooks. All visual data is automatically linked to the work order, and then to the customer file in the CRM/CMMS.

A precise visual history of every asset is progressively built. For example, a specific submersible borehole pump has been the subject of three visually documented work orders. You can see its condition at installation, after the first preventive maintenance, and after the replacement of the check valve. This visual traceability becomes a powerful tool for asset management and renewal planning.

For Wastewater Treatment Plants, successive evolutions are visually documented:

Addition of tertiary treatment,
Replacement of a blower,
Modification of the odor control system.

The facility’s memory no longer rests on a few experienced agents whose retirement takes the knowledge away, but on structured and enduring archives.

AI and smart tagging: finding the technical solution instantly

The real revolution happens when Artificial Intelligence analyzes these archives. Computer vision algorithms create metadata (tags) to identify equipment: “centrifugal pump,” “butterfly valve DN200,” “Sensus 620 meter.” They also categorize types of failures: “flange leak,” “motor fault,” “filter clogging.”

The advanced search engine transforms usage. A technician facing a leak on a butterfly valve no longer hunts for a needle in a digital haystack. They type “butterfly valve DN150 leak” into the platform’s search engine. Instantly, they access videos of previous work orders where colleagues solved this specific problem: the disassembly method, the flange torque settings, and the pitfalls to avoid.

We move from a storage-archive logic to a solution-archive logic. The knowledge base becomes a “Technical Netflix”: rich, easily accessible, and relevant content.

Continuous training and onboarding: accelerating technician upskilling

In a sector facing recruitment tension, the video knowledge base becomes an exceptional continuous training tool.

For onboarding new technicians: They train by watching the expert techniques of seniors, best practices, and safety precautions.
For continuous team training: These sequences become training materials during team meetings or debriefing sessions.
For standardization of practices: The technical manager can analyze different videos of work orders on similar failures, identify the optimal method, and broadcast it as the company standard.

Informal knowledge becomes company knowledge—formalized, accessible to all, and independent of individuals. This cognitive capitalization represents a strategic asset in a sector where service continuity relies on technical mastery.

Towards cognitive maintenance for Water & Wastewater networks

Remote visual support coupled with Artificial Intelligence is not just a communication tool or temporary collaboration aid. It is a tool for:

Data production,
Knowledge structuring,
Progressive transformation of operational practices.

By precisely qualifying incidents before dispatching, unnecessary or ill-prepared work orders are drastically reduced. By connecting isolated technicians with remote experts, rare expertise is scaled without multiplying resources. By capitalizing on archives, it becomes possible to build a collective technical memory. This accelerates the resolution of future failures and facilitates upskilling.

Water and Wastewater players who structure this data via an AI-powered knowledge base:

Sustainably reduce their operational costs,
Improve their contractual performance indicators,
And increase the reliability of their service to users.

They are progressively moving from a logic of reactive curative maintenance to a logic of cognitive maintenance. Thus, each work order enriches the heritage of knowledge and facilitates subsequent work orders.

In a context of aging infrastructure, scarcity of technical skills, and increasing regulatory pressure, this cognitive transformation is no longer an option. It is becoming a condition for economic survival and maintaining the quality of the public water service.

Water and Wastewater: boosting field service resolution with remote visual support