From Purchase Order to Permeate: Deploying Mobile MF-RO in Eight Weeks
When a mine site in Northern Alberta needed 1,000 m³/day of treated water ahead of a permanent plant commissioning window, the timeline from signed purchase order to validated permeate was eight weeks. Mobile MF-RO deployment at that pace is not luck — it is a repeatable process with a defined critical path. This is how a typical GWTS mobile deployment runs, week by week, and what separates an eight-week deployment from a fourteen-week one.
The Eight-Week Deployment Timeline
Every week has one dominant activity and one dominant risk. Compression is possible on some fronts, but the sequence matters more than the speed of any individual step:
- Weeks 1–2 — Engineering and process confirmation: Feedwater analysis is validated against the basis of design, recovery and flux targets are confirmed, antiscalant selection is finalized, and the train configuration (MF skids, RO array, CIP system) is locked. Permitting submissions run in parallel
- Weeks 3–4 — Fabrication and site preparation: Trailer-mounted MF and RO skids undergo pre-deployment checks; the site prepares the pad, feed tie-in, power supply, permeate and reject lines, and chemical storage. Longest-lead consumables (membranes, antiscalant) are staged
- Weeks 5–6 — Mobilization and hookup: Units arrive by road, are set and levelled, and mechanically completed: piping tie-ins, electrical terminations, instrumentation checkout, and control system integration
- Weeks 7–8 — Commissioning and performance validation: Water-on membrane flushing, staged pressure ramp-up, flux stabilization, and a performance run demonstrating capacity, recovery, and permeate quality against contractual guarantees
The schedule holds when weeks 1–2 produce a clean process design and weeks 3–4 run in true parallel — fabrication and site prep at the same time. It slips when engineering assumptions need revisiting after mobilization, which is exactly what the pre-deployment feedwater validation is designed to prevent.
Two client-side decisions have the largest single influence on the timeline: confirming the tie-in locations and utility capacities early enough for the trailer configuration to be engineered against them, and resolving discharge or reject disposal routing before mobilization rather than during commissioning. Both appear trivial on paper and both have consumed more schedule than any equipment delay in our experience.
What the Client Must Provide
Mobile treatment compresses the client’s contribution into a short, defined list — but the items are non-negotiable:
- Feedwater analysis: A complete, recent ion balance with silica, barium, strontium, and organics — the design basis for recovery and antiscalant strategy. GWTS can sample and analyze where recent data doesn’t exist, but this must complete in week 1
- Utilities: Electrical service at the required voltage and capacity, a suitable water supply for flushing and CIP preparation, and freeze protection appropriate to the season
- Site infrastructure: A prepared pad with drainage, feed and discharge tie-in points within reach of the trailer configuration, and laydown space for chemical totes and CIP operations
- Permits and access: Site access clearances (GWTS is ISNetworld registered), and any local permits for installation and discharge the host site owns
Winter deployments add one more requirement: heat tracing and insulated lines from the first day of commissioning, not as a retrofit. Northern Alberta feedwater below 5°C suppresses RO flux materially, and a trailer configured for summer operation will not meet nameplate in January without the heating package sized correctly at the engineering stage.
Performance Validation and Acceptance
Acceptance on this deployment class means a documented performance run: sustained capacity at design recovery, permeate quality against the contractual TDS and SDI targets, and demonstrated stability over a multi-day window rather than a single snapshot. The MF stage — operating at 90–98% water recovery — protects the RO from the variable suspended load typical of mine site feeds, and validation includes confirming cleaning-recovery margins so the operator knows the train’s operable envelope, not just its day-one numbers. Where Indigenous participation targets apply, deployment crews are structured to support 60–80% local workforce targets, consistent with GWTS’s commitments on projects across the region.
Mobile vs. Permanent: The ROI Framing
The eight-week mobile deployment is the right tool under a specific set of conditions: the treatment need is real but time-bounded (commissioning support, dewatering campaigns, discharge management during facility outages), the feedwater is not yet fully characterized, or capital would otherwise sit idle past the need date. Against permanent plant capital — which in this region typically carries a multi-year engineering, procurement, and construction cycle — mobile MF-RO converts a capital decision into an operating expense and buys the time to make the permanent decision properly.
Where mobile units also earn their keep beyond the emergency framing: as the piloting platform itself. Running the mobile train on the actual feedwater generates the recovery, fouling, and water-quality data that de-risks any permanent plant design — several GWTS deployments have deliberately transitioned from rental operation into permanent DBO scope, with 65–85% of the work self-performed. In that path, the mobile phase is not a detour around the capital decision; it is the first phase of it.
For the Northern Alberta deployment described above, the practical outcome was treated water available for the commissioning window at roughly a fifth of the elapsed time a permanent mobilization would have required — and a performance dataset that later fed directly into the permanent plant’s basis of design. That is the mobile value proposition at its best: capacity now, and better engineering later.