Establishing – and reviewing – your water management program is crucial for protecting everyone in your facility.

Legionella and waterborne pathogen controls start during planning, continue into construction, and should be reviewed continually during the operational phase. New testing, control, mitigation, and remediation options are being developed continually, so your plan must be updated to keep pace. 

The water management team is as important as a plan. This team should be composed of multiple disciplines.

These cross functional teams are often made up of: 

There are 5 main factors that lead to Legionella growth, all of which interact with each other

See how the factors interact below:

Legionella has a specific temperature range that it thrives in.

See how different temperature range affect Legionella growth below:

Multibarrier protection makes it more difficult for Legionella growth by adding barriers that either kill or filter the bacteria.

Every facility has a different configuration and varying distances between the hot water supply and the many points of use.

Many risk factors can emerge from overly long hot water loops and insufficient circulation. Even in facilities with these issues, there are solutions such as an automatic hot water loop control system. 

Not all piping materials are equal when it comes to Legionella prevention.

Different piping materials have varying susceptibilities to biofilm growth and oxidation, which create differing levels of vulnerabilities for Legionella colonization.