Water Flows in Iraq build this plant and be a part of history’.” His wife and three children, Heather, Jordan and Drew all agreed it would be a great experience, so he packed his bags When he arrived in Iraq, he discovered Allen-Bradley PLCs to be very limited in their programming with roughly only 10 percent completed and the Modicon Quantum PLC at roughly 80 percent ready. He immediately set to work. “The GUI was also limited and very static in its appearance and function” added Watts. Looking east from the new Flocculation Clarifier you see the Garaaf River. In Badaah, Iraq, David Watts is putting the finishing touches on his work in the Nasiriyah Water Treatment Plant which has been his home away from home for the last eight weeks. The Nasiriyah Plant is the largest water treatment facility in Southern Iraq and will supply 10,000 cubic meters per hour of fresh drinking water to approximately 3 million Iraqis in Ad-Dawayah, Badaah, Al-Shatra, Al-Garaaf, Nasiriyah and Sug Ash Shuyuk. Individual Controllogix processors were placed at the three pump stations along the Garaaf River, a small branch of the Tigris River. The fourth Controllogix was placed in the control room to function as a SCADA host for the plant. The Quantum PLC, which has 20 Remote I/O drops, was used to control the backwash of 20 individual filters cells. “Then came the problem of getting the Quantum PLC to communicate with the Controllogix,” said Watts. “This new water facility rivals any state-of-the-art water treatment plant we have in the States,” said Watts. But it didn’t start out that way. Watts said he was sitting in his home office in Krum, Texas one day when he received an email from a friend asking if he would be interested in going to Iraq to program some PLCs. Evidently the PLCs had been ordered and shipped to the facility but they had no one in the area who knew how to program them. David Watts’ company, DWC Technology, which he owns, is primarily involved in systems integration and consulting for automation projects. “I thought about it for awhile,” said Watts. “Then my daughter said, ‘wouldn’t it be awesome to go and help Continued on back > A S I A PAC I F I C | A F R I C A | E U R O P E | M I D D L E E A S T | L AT I N A M E R I C A | N O RT H A M E R I C A

Water Flows in Iraq “I had never used a ProSoft Technology interface module before. And, of course, there were no manuals or cables on location to help me with this so I called ProSoft Tech Support.” Scott Lee, a Technical Support Engineer from ProSoft, answered the call. “You could tell right away that he had his hands full,” said Lee. “But he obviously knew how to program and only needed a little nudge in the right direction to get the ProSoft Modbus Interface module up and running.” “Nabeel was hired to handle the IT at the plant,” said Watts. “But he has also received a crash course in PLC...