SERVICE LINES / WATER AND WASTEWATER ENGINEERING
A partnered practice combining analytical rigor with best-in-class treatment technology.
Water and wastewater engineering in collaboration with Vatek — bringing proven international treatment systems and co-developed analytical methodology to US industrial and institutional clients.
Why this service line is partnered.
Water and wastewater engineering is one of the few service lines in my practice where independent consulting is not the right delivery model. The work requires three things at once: rigorous analytical methodology to size and scope a system against a specific facility’s discharge profile; engineered treatment technology at the right scale and specification for the problem; and the operational integration expertise to embed the system in the facility’s ongoing operations. Independent consultants can bring the first and the third. The second requires a manufacturing partner.
My practice in this service line is built on a partnership with Vatek — a Turkish manufacturer of water and wastewater treatment systems with which I have collaborated for several years on industrial installations across Turkey, North Africa, Southeast Asia, China, Mexico, and South America. Vatek’s product portfolio runs from containerized modular units handling small flow rates to large-scale in-ground multistage separation and filtration installations operating at municipal scale. The equipment is, in my direct experience, among the best-engineered treatment technology I have seen in thirty-five years of facilities work.
The analytical foundation.
Sizing and scoping a wastewater treatment system for a specific facility is not a catalog exercise. A generic solution rarely fits. Every facility produces a discharge profile that is specific to its operations, its inputs, its process variability, and its regulatory environment. Designing against that profile — rather than against a product datasheet — is the discipline that separates engineered solutions from procured ones.
Across the international portfolio Vatek has developed, an analytical protocol that governs system sizing and scoping has bee built. The protocol is technical and chemical at once: it characterizes the discharge composition, volume, variability, and contaminant profile; matches those characteristics against the regulatory framework of the jurisdiction in question; and produces system specifications designed around the facility’s actual requirements. The analytical tooling for this work — the spreadsheet models, the cost analyses, the consultative engineering narratives that support each proposal — has been built in-house across more than one hundred and fifty engineered offers.
Water and wastewater engineering is not a catalog exercise. The analytical protocol is the discipline that makes a generic product specific to a facility.
Bringing the practice to the US market.
The collaboration with Vatek is now oriented toward US market entry. Industrial, institutional, and municipal clients in the United States increasingly face water and wastewater challenges that require engineered solutions rather than off-the-shelf equipment — stricter discharge regulations, aging infrastructure, industrial water reuse opportunities, and capital pressure that rewards systems designed for total lifecycle cost rather than sticker price.
The Problem Solved Consulting and Vatek collaboration is positioned to serve those clients. My practice brings the consultative analytical work, the facilities integration expertise, and the operational doctrine. Vatek brings the engineered treatment technology at a specification level that is difficult to source domestically. Together, the partnership delivers systems designed specifically for each client’s discharge profile, sized correctly for the operational and regulatory environment, and integrated into the broader facility systems that depend on them.
The integration with the rest of the doctrine.
Water and wastewater systems do not operate in isolation. They integrate with facilities engineering (infrastructure, utility routing, plant operations), capital planning (treatment systems are significant capital investments with defined lifecycle), supply chain (chemical inputs, consumables, parts), and safety and risk (chemical handling, effluent compliance, environmental exposure). A treatment system designed without regard for these integrations produces operational friction. One designed with them in mind produces a system the facility can actually run. That integration discipline is what Problem Solved Consulting brings to every Vatek engagement.
Engagement.
Water and wastewater engagements typically begin with a technical and chemical characterization of the facility’s discharge profile against regulatory and operational requirements, followed by system design, capital planning, and operational integration work. All engagements are delivered as a partnered practice with Vatek as the equipment partner. Inquiries welcome from industrial operators, institutional clients, and municipal authorities evaluating water and wastewater treatment investments.