Nacogdoches names Tetra Tech to design multi-year SCADA upgrades for water and wastewater systems

The Nacogdoches City Council on May 20 voted unanimously to approve staff’s recommendation to select Tetra Tech to design SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) replacements and upgrades for the city’s water and wastewater systems.

Staff described an 11-firm response to RFQ 2610-112 and a scoring process that shortlisted four firms for in-person interviews. The recommendation to select Tetra Tech followed scoring and interviews; staff said the work will proceed through contract negotiations before detailed design and phased implementation.

Philip Liu of Tetra Tech told the council the project’s principal goals are to update aging, end-of-life equipment, give operators better monitoring and control of remote sites, and increase resiliency so the system can better detect faults and minimize downtime. Liu said the vendor team includes specialists focused on cybersecurity and network design to reduce vulnerability.

Council members asked about potential downtime during upgrades and cybersecurity safeguards. Liu said planned outages will be minimized and scheduled to limit service disruption and that the vendor will use a cybersecurity team to design secure automation and redundancy.

A council motion to approve staff’s selection carried unanimously; staff noted the full design and implementation phase may take two to three years.