The Order That Changed Three Pressures and Nobody Wrote Down Which Valves Moved
Water distribution, gas networks, industrial process systems — any infrastructure that depends on valve states has the same problem: somebody opened something, the system behaved differently than expected, and the log either doesn't exist or says "valve operations, 14:30" with no specifics. When you're trying to figure out why a district meter area started showing unexplained losses at 03:00, the valve operation record from the previous afternoon is either your answer or your starting point.
This template is one order per record, with capacity for five valves per operation.
Order Number and Authorisation: The Accountability Chain
Order number and Authorisation granted by are the two fields that make this a controlled operation rather than an ad-hoc adjustment. In a properly managed network, no valve moves without a work order and a name attached to it. When the District Network Manager is accountable by name in the record, the culture of undocumented "quick adjustments" — the ones that explain half of the hydraulic anomalies in any network — stops being viable.
The Date Time field stamps when the order was issued. Each valve entry has its own Date Time of operation field, which may differ from the order time by hours. A valve operation ordered at 08:00 and executed at 13:45 tells you that there was a delay — and when the post-operation pressure data looks wrong, the gap between order time and execution time is where you start looking.
Five Valves, Five Condition States, One Record
Each of the five valve slots carries Valve ID, UID, Valve Type, Normal Position, Valve Condition, and Post Op Position. Six fields per valve, thirty fields total for a full five-valve operation order.
Valve Type distinguishes Network, Operational, Process, Strategic, and Tactical — the classification that determines who has authority to operate it and what the hydraulic consequence of movement is. A Strategic valve controls a major district boundary; its operation requires planning, notification, and pressure management downstream. A Tactical valve adjusts local flow in a sub-zone. Logging the type means that anyone reading the record six months later immediately understands the operational significance.
Valve Condition is the field that surfaces deferred maintenance in real time. Seized. Passing. Leaking. Lid Seized. Buried. Broken. Not Checked. When a valve is operated and found to be Passing — meaning it doesn't fully close and continues to allow flow in the "closed" position — that condition gets recorded against the UID and the asset manager has a defect record. Without this field, a passing valve stays in service indefinitely because the operator noted it mentally and the information died with the shift.
Normal Position versus Post Op Position is the audit trail. A valve that was Closed in normal position and is now Closed after the operation is settled. A valve that was Open in normal position and is now Partly Open means it was adjusted, not just operated and returned. That delta is the hydraulic evidence of what actually changed in the network, and it's the data your model needs when you're trying to reconcile measured flows against calculated demand.