Central Plains Water

The challenge

CPWL’s SCADA environment monitors and controls water delivery across the scheme. Prior to undertaking this project, it was running on six Windows Server 2016 virtual machines that were approaching the end of Microsoft support. These machines covered the SCADA application, web and database tiers, the remote access server used by operations and maintenance staff, a test environment, and the server feeding CPWL’s data analytics platform.

Running these servers past the end of Microsoft support was not an option: The SCADA environment supports day-to-day scheme and dam safety management operations, so any outage during the migration had to be short and carefully planned.

The SCADA environment also spanned three providers, each responsible for a different layer. Clear ownership and coordination were essential from the outset.

Our solution

We scoped the remediation in June 2026 and agreed responsibilities with the two other vendors before any work began. We owned the infrastructure layer: virtual machine builds, operating systems, networking, patching, backup, monitoring and handover. Rubicon Water owned the application layer, including the Oracle database upgrade and their SCADA software. Flock Consulting covered the data ingestion workload.

Rather than rebuilding like-for-like, we rebuilt the environment across two operating systems. The SCADA application, web and database servers were rebuilt on Oracle Linux to run Rubicon’s containerised platform, ready for Rubicon’s upgrade to Oracle 19c and their current software release. The remote desktop and data ingestion servers were rebuilt on Windows Server, so control room staff and field-based maintenance operators who rely on Windows still have a remote desktop server. The Windows work included user provisioning and a data ingestion cutover coordinated with Flock Consulting. We also built and migrated a separate UAT environment, giving CPWL and Rubicon somewhere to test changes before they reached production.

Bringing Linux into CPWL’s environment also meant bringing it into our services. We extended our patching, backup and monitoring to cover the new Oracle Linux servers, so they are managed alongside CPWL’s Windows servers. We agreed database recovery responsibilities with Rubicon in writing and handled the single sign-on and domain name service changes for the new servers. We also decommissioned the legacy servers, keeping images for reference, and rewrote CPWL’s systems and disaster recovery documentation to match the new environment.

Production cut over on 1 September 2026 in a planned four-to-five-hour window. Users saw an interruption during the changeover, and the environment was confirmed working the same day. The UAT environment was migrated after the production cutover, giving CPWL and Rubicon a place to test future changes before they reach the live system.

CPWL now runs a supported, documented SCADA platform across Windows and Linux, with both covered by our managed services for monitoring, security, backup and recovery, along with a documented recovery path.