The Blueprint Method

Definition

A repeatable five step diagnostic procedure for water treatment problems built on the free body diagram and mass balance.

The steps are: identify the symptom (what is out of bounds), identify the component (where the symptom lives), list the forces acting on that component (scale, corrosion, biology, solids, plus heat and flow), apply the mass balance (what changed in what enters, leaves, or concentrates), then pull the smallest lever that corrects the cause rather than the reading. It generalizes the free body diagram into a field tool usable on every system visit. It shifts the operator from treating symptoms to diagnosing systems.

Related concepts

The Four Pillars · Free Body Diagram · Smallest Lever Principle

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Part of The Blueprint of Water · 🛠️ operations