Managing water in NYC’s skyscrapers is no small feat. Through a 35-year partnership, Revere and GA Fleet developed Fleetway™—a flexible, reliable control platform powering high-rise water systems in some of the city’s most iconic buildings.
GA Fleet, a longstanding partner of Revere Control Systems, operates in a space that’s both highly specialized and in constant demand, providing water systems for high-rise buildings. Together, they’ve brought innovative water supply solutions to some of New York City’s most iconic projects, including the largest commercial development in U.S. history—a project valued at over $20 billion. With Fleetway™, their mission-critical control platform that manages pumps, tanks, and water distribution systems in high-rise buildings, GA Fleet ensures that water flows exactly where it’s needed, no matter how high.
The Skyscraper Water Problem
To understand the challenges GA Fleet addresses, it helps to consider how municipal water systems work. In a small city, water is typically pressurized by pumping it into elevated water towers. Gravity then creates the pressure needed to push the water through distribution systems to homes and businesses. The height of the water tower above the ground provides the force required for water to flow through the pipes and reach its destination.
Now, imagine trying to apply that same system to a skyscraper. While the gravity-fed approach works well for a three-story house, it’s nowhere near enough to deliver water to the 88th floor of a high-rise. At such extreme heights, the city’s water supply loses its ability to overcome the gravitational force, making additional systems essential to maintain pressure and ensure reliable water delivery.
For a high-rise to function — and, more importantly, to ensure safety — its water systems must be expertly engineered. Water has to flow upward, sprinklers need to be ready to spring into action, and tanks must be filled for emergencies. For decades, GA Fleet has been solving this problem with innovative water system designs. But designing the system is only half the battle. The other half is the controls — and that’s where Revere and Fleetway™ shine.
Fleetway™ Water Systems Controller
Over their three-decade partnership, Revere and GA Fleet have co-developed Fleetway™, a mission-critical control platform that manages pumps, tanks, and water distribution systems in high-rise buildings. As flexible as it is powerful, Fleetway™ ensures reliable water delivery hundreds of feet above the ground. Fleetway™ was born from a simple premise: GA Fleet’s deep expertise in water systems, distilled into a control platform that works for any NYC high-rise. Revere took this expertise and turned it into a scalable, field-configurable platform with a highly specifiable feature set that integrates seamlessly with building management systems (BMS), designed to meet the unique demands of the market.
What sets Fleetway™ apart is GA Fleet’s unique approach to evolving its capabilities. Drawing from the feedback and requests of its clients over the years, GA Fleet identifies common challenges and opportunities to expand Fleetway’s feature set. According to Barry Theodosi, Senior Electrical/Control System Engineer at Revere, “Fleetway™ is different from anything else on the market. It’s hundreds of years of experience baked into one platform, ready to go.” This approach ensures that every addition to the platform addresses real-world needs and strengthens its value for future projects.
Fleetway’s Evolution
Fleetway’s journey began with a simple sewer ejector system — essentially a basic lift station control. From there, it expanded to tank fill systems, booster applications, and beyond. Each new challenge added a layer of sophistication to Fleetway™. Cooling towers, standalone tanks, HVAC applications, and even a niche solution designed to eliminate noise in luxury penthouses (dubbed the “Hush Pumpy”) have all been incorporated. Today, Fleetway™ is tackling cutting-edge applications, including a system that recycles heat from wastewater to reduce energy costs.
When asked how GA Fleet has been able to continuously evolve Fleetway™, company president David Shepard pointed to the importance of working with the right partners. “To be a value-added supplier, we align ourselves with value-added manufacturers,” Shepard explained. “If you combine best-in-class products with top-notch services and support, you create a package that’s hard for competitors to match. Revere fits perfectly into that model.”
Over the years, Fleetway™ has grown not just in functionality but in its ability to provide a truly integrated solution for high-rise water systems. As Theodosi explained, “Every feature we added was driven by a real-world need. If one client needed it, there’s a good chance others would too.”
When it comes to what makes Fleetway™ such an asset, we believe it can be boiled down into three core qualities:
1. A Comprehensive Solution
Fleetway™ offers a specifiable, all-in-one system that simplifies the process for consulting engineers, contractors, and end users alike and customers rely on Fleetway™ for its breadth of capabilities. From booster systems to tank fill applications, Fleetway™ covers it all in a single package. “Fleetway is a complete package, so when GA Fleet presents it to a consulting engineer, they can say, ‘This single system covers everything your building needs.’ It simplifies the specification process and makes the engineer’s job much easier,” explained Theodosi.
With capabilities that go beyond the essentials, Fleetway™ offers options that contractors might not need today but will appreciate in the future. This forward-thinking design ensures Fleetway’s relevance as systems evolve.
2. Field Configurability
Water systems contractors often encounter unexpected challenges, from missing components to last-minute design changes. Michael Stanaland, Project Engineer at Revere, recalled a recent project: “The customer called and said they didn’t have a flow meter installed. All they had to do was check a box in Fleetway, and the system worked perfectly without it,” he explained.
Fleetway’s ability to support a “hot swap” — to make live changes while the system is powered — makes all the difference. “You can make modifications without fear of damaging anything or disrupting operations. It’s flexibility you don’t get from off-the-shelf solutions,” Stanaland added.
Fleetway’s configurability goes deeper than simple fixes. Users can reassign inputs, adjust hardware connections, and even redefine system behavior through the touchscreen interface. Users can type the change directly on the screen. No custom programming. No laptops. Just a few taps.
Fleetway™ doesn’t just adapt to the field; it transforms the field. Whether the contractor is adjusting pump configurations or deciding whether the tanks feed the pumps or vice versa, Fleetway™ allows for immediate, intuitive changes. As Theodosi explained, “The real magic of Fleetway is that you can change what it does. You can redefine the entire system on the fly.” This flexibility eliminates the need for a custom PLC application or the expense of bringing in an engineer to load a completely new program onto the controller.
3. Ready for the Unexpected
Beyond its predefined functions, Fleetway™ also includes nameable, generic inputs and outputs that contractors can easily repurpose for unexpected needs that arise on-site.
Michael Stanaland explained how this flexibility can be a game-changer: “For instance, if a contractor discovers they need to monitor an alarm they hadn’t planned for, they can tie it into our control panel, name it, and send it to the building management system. It’s that flexible.” Fleetway makes it possible to adjust mid-project without costly delays or reprogramming.
Revere and GA Fleet: A 35-Year Collaboration
From Revere’s point of view, GA Fleet isn’t your typical equipment representative, but rather an engineering solutions company. With 65 years of experience in flow solutions and a team of over 135 employees, GA Fleet has built a reputation as one of the most effective providers of technical solutions to demanding applications. Unlike many reps that focus solely on selling products, GA Fleet takes a hands-on, solution-driven approach. They employ engineers, service professionals, and R&D teams who deeply understand how systems work and collaborate with Revere to develop tailored solutions.
This collaborative approach is key to their success. As Greg Graves, Vice President at Revere, explained, “They bring us living documents filled with ideas and requirements. We have kickoff meetings, review them together, and offer input. It’s not just about electrical controls—it’s about the process. We talk through what Fleet is looking for and evolve the system to meet those needs.”
This partnership is grounded in decades of collaboration. Since 1989, Revere has worked side by side with GA Fleet, and the commitment between the two teams runs deep. Some Revere team members have spent 15 years dedicated to the Fleetway™ project, fostering a level of teamwork and camaraderie that doesn’t happen overnight. Graves, highlighted this unique dynamic, saying, “We’ve worn the GA Fleet uniform, served as their technical experts, and done whatever we can to support them. That’s what 35 years of working together looks like.”
The value of this partnership goes both ways. GA Fleet recognizes that partnering with Revere allows them to focus on their core expertise while relying on a trusted partner for controls and integration. “We’re great at engineering water systems, but we’re not control panel experts. Back in the day, we designed our own control panels, but as things progressed, we realized it made more sense to partner with someone who could do it better. Revere isn’t the least expensive manufacturer, but they offer better support, better design, and higher quality. Their panels don’t just work well—they look great. When an end user sees one, they know they got what they paid for.”
Fleetway™ At A Glance:
- Comprehensive Applications: Domestic water booster systems, roof tank fill and level controls, HVAC pumping, wastewater heat recovery, and more.
- Pump and Tank Management: Simultaneously controls up to four pumps and four tanks, with configurable modes (ATL, RVSS, VFD) and emergency power capabilities.
- BMS-Ready:Integrates seamlessly with protocols like Modbus TCP, Modbus RTU, and BACnet MSTP/IP for monitoring, alarms, and data acquisition.
- Field Configurability: Enables live adjustments to hardware and system behavior without reprogramming or downtime.
- Hot Swap Functionality: Allows modifications while powered, ensuring uninterrupted operation.
- Modular Design: Scales with facilities as system needs expand.