The Tuesday pack, without the Friday retype

Riverward Water supplies a scatter of boroughs west of Pittsburgh. The system is fourteen reservoirs, a set of intakes, and the valve yards that go with them. Three inspectors cover it on two routes, Tuesday and Thursday. Dana Crowe has been superintendent since 2016. The walks were not the problem. The walks were fine. The problem was Friday.

Each inspector kept a notebook in the truck. Photos went to a group thread when the phone had a bar of service at the top of the embankment, and nowhere when it did not. An aide, one person, rebuilt the week on Friday afternoon so Dana could send a pack to the authority. Dana timed it in 2023, before Tidep had the whole route, because the board had asked why “paperwork” was a job. The answer was about six hours for the Tuesday route alone, longer if a photo had to be matched to a valve by memory.

They did not start with a valve census. Ruth Ellison, who had written rounds on a system like this, argued for the opposite. List the stops the Tuesday route already makes. Give each one the name the inspector says. Put the limit in the check, not in a binder back at the garage. Riverward’s first route had six stops at Reservoir 3 and the yard, including RW-VLV-14, the intake valve that still shows up in our examples because it is a real recurring nuisance: packing at the gland, a slow drip, never quite the emergency everyone fears and never quite nothing.

The first month was clumsy. One inspector kept the notebook as well, which was correct. The second copy is how you notice the software missed a stop. What changed by the fall was the aide’s Friday. The pack came off the route when the trucks returned. Dana’s review, which is reading the open items and deciding what can wait, took about forty minutes. We quote that number because Dana wrote it down, and because it is modest. Nobody at Riverward inspects faster because a phone is in the truck. They stop retyping.

Two habits mattered more than the screen.

First, photos sit on the point, not on the round. Reservoir 3 has valves that look alike in a picture. A photo of a wet flange with no asset id was how the Friday rebuild went wrong. Tidep will keep the photo, and the pack will say if it had no reading. Inspectors grumbled. Dana backed the grumble down. The rule is in the journal because we had to repeat it elsewhere: a photo is not a record.

Second, open items survive the person. L. Ortiz owns the packing leak at RW-VLV-14 until it is closed or formally held. When Ortiz is off, the Thursday inspector can add a reading and cannot close Ortiz’s item. That felt rude for a week. It stopped a close that was really “I think they handled it.” The deficiency list is short. Dana can read it on the phone at the garage, which is the sentence Dana lets us print: the open valves are visible before the trucks are back, and the report is no longer something Dana builds.

They still have valves that are not in the register. A blowoff on a side road that nobody walks on a schedule is not in Tidep, and Dana does not want it there until a route touches it. The register is the walk. The rest of the system remains on the drawings, where it was.

If you run a similar yard, the part to copy is the sequence, not the reservoir count. One route. The stops you already make. Limits written on the check. A pack that leads with what is open. Then the second route. Riverward’s Thursday route came six weeks after Tuesday, on purpose.

Dana Crowe, Superintendent, Riverward Water. The note was checked with them before it went on the site.