The modern age simply could not exist without industrial water treatment. Water is used to air condition and heat office buildings, generate electricity, manufacture goods, and cool the data centers that make the internet possible. While vital and often irreplaceable, water comes with many challenges, including corrosion, scale deposits, unwanted microbiological growth, scarcity, health risks, and impacts upon the environment. It is the job of the Industrial Water Treatment Professional to help manage these challenges to meet the end user’s goals and responsibilities.
What Does an Industrial Water Treatment Professional Do?
While there are many roles that fall under the scope of an “Industrial Water Treatment Professional,” the primary role that springs to mind is that of the Water Treatment Account Manager. This role is typically the face of the company dealing with end users every day (i.e., customers and prospects). This person:
- Runs analytical tests on the various system waters
- Troubleshoots
- Makes corrective recommendations/actions
- Trains personnel
- Ensures the water management programs are running smoothly
- Communicates with both the end user and management
- Onboards new customers
- Sells value-added services, chemistry, and equipment
What Water Systems are Managed?
There are multiple types of water systems that a customer may have. Each region of the world will have a different mix of these systems depending on the local market, climate, regulations, etc. A typical list includes:
- Boilers
- Cooling Towers
- Chillers
- Closed Loops
- Pretreatment (e.g., Reverse Osmosis, Softeners, Filters)
- Process Water
- Wastewater
- Potable Secondary Disinfection
What Toolset is Available?
An Industrial Water Treatment Professional has a wide toolset available to meet the end user’s needs and solve their problems. These toolsets are built around the categories of chemistry, equipment, and service.
- Chemistry: Along with an understanding of the water chemistry, there is an array of chemicals that can be applied to a water system to inhibit scale deposits, minimize corrosion, manage unwanted microbiological activity, treat wastewater, clean systems, and more.
- Equipment: Equipment that removes unwanted components (e.g., softeners removing hardness), controls the water treatment program (e.g., cooling tower controller), feeds chemicals at precise levels, monitors microbiological activity, etc. is available.
- Service: Onsite and remote visits to monitor, manage, troubleshoot, and correct water treatment programs are vital to success.
What Skillsets are Required?
It takes a robust skillset to be an Industrial Water Treatment Professional, most of which can be learned with dedication and patience. Common skillsets include:
- Life-Long Learner: While water itself doesn’t change, the way it is used and treated does change and vary. Having an appetite for always learning more and improving is crucial to growth and success.
- Effective communication (both oral and written): Every visit and action needs to be communicated to the customer and your employer. This includes well-written field service reports, emails, inspection reports, annual reviews, presentations, and so forth.
- Analytical Testing: Testing water for various components (e.g., hardness, alkalinity, pH, conductivity) is important to assess the status of the systems, evaluate the impact of the water management programs, trend long-term conditions, and troubleshoot.
- Troubleshooting: Things can go wrong, and it is the role of the Industrial Water Treatment Professional to logically figure out the cause and corrective action.
- Chemistry: The chemical makeup of the water varies across the world and can make each application unique. Understanding both the water chemistry and chemicals that can be added to manage scale deposits, corrosion, and unwanted microbiological activity is key.
- Mechanical Aptitude: Knowing how cooling towers, boilers, chillers, controllers, dosing pumps, softeners, etc. work is important to meeting the customer’s needs and goals.
- Math: Calculating dosages, chemical usage rates, volumes, equipment capacities, and more is required to support a successful program.
- Sales Ability: Managing and growing an account base requires sales and people skills.
- Time Management: A portfolio of accounts with a wide array of dynamic needs requires efficient time management to service effectively.
- Computers: Collecting, analyzing, and communicating data to make sense to both you and the customer is important to managing water systems successfully.
- Reliability: Always doing what you promise is a core requirement.
- Motivation: Having the drive to service a customer base each day while looking for solutions and new opportunities requires self motivation.
- Honesty: Giving honest answers, even when it is, “I don’t know but will find out,” is vital to long-term customer relationships.
- Curiosity: Wanting to understand industrial water systems, customer’s systems, new technologies, and more will help drive success.
What are Daily Activities?
Not every day is the same for Industrial Water Treatment Professionals because not every water system is the same and various needs arise. Some common activities that fill the day include:
- Protecting Health and the Environment: by reducing water usage, minimizing energy requirements, managing unwanted constituents, helping manage waterborne pathogens (e.g., Legionella), maximizing equipment life, etc.
- Communicating: with customers, prospects, operators, vendors, managers, and back-office support staff
- Water Sampling:from boiler, cooling, closed, process, and wastewater systems
- Analytical Testing: using field test kits and sending samples to a laboratory
- Reviewing Systems: to understand, evaluate, and troubleshoot
- Troubleshooting: water systems to solve problems and challenges
- Report Writing: to document and communicate water system status, conditions, impacts, issues, and more
- Selling: new business and value-added services to grow your account base
- Proposal Writing: to communicate the water treatment program and benefits to the prospect or customer
- Training: onsite operators and staff on water management and importance
- Presenting: ideas and reviews to prospects and customers
- Inventorying: chemical products, testing reagents, and other consumables
- Inspecting: equipment to ensure operability, troubleshoot, and evaluate success of the water treatment program
- Repairing: dosing pumps, controllers, and other water-related equipment
- Cleaning & Calibrating: probes and test equipment
- Ordering: chemical products, test reagents, equipment, and consumables
- Surveying: prospects and water systems to understand and document system data (e.g., equipment, volume, flowrates, sizes, metallurgies, goals)
- Calculating: water usage, savings, chemical consumption, equipment sizing, and so forth
What is the Impact upon Sustainability?
At the onset of the industrial revolution, the unique challenges of using water were quickly realized. Boilers scaled up and required regular shutdowns to remove the hard scale deposits, often with hammers. Corrosion caused failures which cost time, money, and sometimes lives. Water was commonly used only once before being dumped down the drain, and at times of water scarcity, facilities had to reduce capacity or shut down. The wastewaters being released to the environment could be polluted both with toxic constituents and heat.
Industrial water treatment was FOUNDED as a sustainable alternative to the practices above. Through advances in chemistry and equipment with the support of expert service, industrial water treatment minimizes the impact upon the environment by maximizing water and energy efficiencies, minimizing scale and corrosion, increasing equipment life, and optimizing wastewater treatment to increase the sustainability of the water-related operations.
What are the Safety Concerns?
Industrial water systems can be large and powerful with multiple safety-related concerns. While your first safety champion is yourself, your employer and customer facilities will offer training programs and applicable control measures to help you identify and safely manage any hazards.
What are Other Roles?
Aside from the Water Treatment Account Manager role just described, there are many other career paths available. They are all part of the fabric that makes today’s industry water treatment both possible and successful. A typical list includes:
- Technical Support
- Management
- Marketing
- Service Technicians
- Accounting
- Purchasing
- Corporate Account Managers
- Logistics
- Administrative Support
- Application Engineers
- Design Engineers
- Equipment Manufacturing
- Laboratory Scientists
- Research Scientists
- Microbiological Scientists
- Product Formulators
- IT/Digital
- Pathogenic Water Risk Management
- Safety
- Regulatory
- Legal
- Project Management
- Customer Service
Conclusions
Industrial water treatment is an important and satisfying career option. People spend their entire careers as Industrial Water Treatment Professionals. Regardless of what the economy does, industrial and commercial users need water to keep their doors open, which makes industrial water treatment a recession-insulated profession. If you are interested in learning more or becoming an Industrial Water Treatment Professional, please visit our careers page.
Written by: James McDonald, PE, CWT