Many years back, I was challenged by a Health Department Officer regarding the water chemistry in one of my pools. I checked the logs and it looked fine, so I asked the team to come to the pool and carry out a test in front of the Health Department Officer. On carrying out the test with a color comparator, we found that the individual interpretation was very different from his colleagues, which was also very different to mine and the Health Department Officer’s opinion. Not one out of the four of us thought it was the same number. So in saying all this, I can confidently say that if I asked 5 people to test the same water using a color comparator, it is highly likely that we would receive a variety of different results.
The technology exists! Go digital, let the device give you the result in a number, and take away the guesswork.
The big questions here are: what value do you put to human area; what value do you put to people safety; and what value is your company going to regret when they are in a lawsuit?
Nicholas Pawley is the Vice President of Maintenance & Water Quality at the Qiddiya Water Theme Park in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He began working in the Aquatic / Water Quality industry in the mid-1990s.
During the past decade his work has been Middle East-based, focused upon waterpark maintenance and water quality, establishing industry best practices, introducing new technology, developing cost-effective methods, and efficiencies in manpower.
His work over the past 2.5 years can be summarized as pre-opening responsibilities, where he is establishing all processes and documentation associated to the technical services division and, most exciting, building a maintenance team that will pioneer maintenance practices for the region.