Salem & Beverly Water Supply Board

Engineering Intern · May 2026 – August 2026 · Beverly, MA

Overview
The Salem & Beverly Water Supply Board treats and delivers drinking water to both cities. I spent the summer working across the plant, from the lab to construction projects, and got to see how a real piece of public infrastructure is run, maintained, and improved.

Backwash Optimization Study
My main project was a study I designed and led on the plant’s filter backwash process. Backwash lengths varied a lot depending on the operator, and each backwash uses a significant amount of water. I collected and compared backwash volume and turbidity data across all four operators and multiple filters to find a standardized procedure that still kept water quality where it needed to be. The new procedure is projected to save over 2 million gallons of water a year, and I handed the study off to plant staff as implementation began.

Lab and Field Work
Every week I ran lab tests on water samples, using a pH meter and turbidimeter to check pH, color, turbidity, and bacteria against regulatory standards, and logged every result. In the field, I used commercial grade GPS equipment to survey pipeline locations and plotted the coordinates in GIS using AutoCAD.

Projects and Planning
I shadowed construction project management on active facility upgrades, working alongside contractors and superintendents to track progress. I also sat on the RFP selection committee for a pumping station redundancy project, reviewing proposals and interviewing four candidate firms.

What I learned
Infrastructure can’t go down, so every decision gets backed by data and planned around what happens if something fails. Leading my own study taught me how to take a messy real-world problem, collect the right data, and turn it into a recommendation people could actually use.

Hang tight, photos pending approval from Salem-Beverly Water Supply Board!