Commissioning of a next-generation filter control system at the Omohundro Water Treatment Plant in Nashville began in 2025. The system aims to improve upon a legacy manual backwash system by automating backwash processes and enhancing situational awareness for operators. Key features include algorithms for flow distribution, scheduled backwashes, customizable backwash recipes, performance analytics, and an intuitive operator interface. Measured results from commissioning and early operations highlight improvements in efficiency, operator workload, and filter performance. Many utilities still run filters with inconsistent backwash practices and limited visibility, which increases operator workload and performance variability. The objective at the Omohundro Water Treatment Plant in Nashville was to design and implement an operator-friendly, high-performance filter control system. This system standardizes filtration, automates backwashes, and elevates situational awareness. Ninety years of filter controls experience was translated into a modern, field-tested design. The system incorporates several key attributes: • Filtration management: Algorithms that distribute flow evenly across all active filters, balancing load while respecting common channel level constraints. This ensures filters operate with consistent loading throughout operations without flow disturbances that can limit run length or water quality. • Backwash scheduling: Filters can be scheduled on a calendar, allowing operations staff to plan wash events in advance and align them with shift coverage and plant maintenance needs. • Backwash recipe builder: Filters can be assigned individual backwash recipes, allowing operators to test and optimize performance while also adjusting for seasonal changes, treatment disturbances, or outlier treatment events. • Performance analytics: Filter efficiency and headloss metrics tracked continuously to provide early warning of declining filter performance and maintenance needs. • Operator interface: High-performance HMI screens that guide operators step-by-step through states, transitions, and alarms, ensuring clarity and reducing training time. This presentation will introduce a straightforward approach for moving to automated backwashes and data driven control and share lessons from startup that reduce operational risk. Plant operators who use the system day-to-day will share their candid opinions on how the practical HMI screens and simple performance measures have changed their work. The design process included shadowing operators during normal plant activities, creating HMI screen designs with staff feedback, and conducting extensive FAT/SAT scenario drills to validate permissives and timing logic. Commissioning of the system began in 2025, replacing a legacy interface that required manual backwashes. Measured results from commissioning and early operations include changes in operator interventions, backwash duration and water use, filter-to-filter rate variance during production, time to detect filter performance anomalies, and time to operator proficiency. Early training and practice simulations indicate a reduction in manual actions and greater visibility into how the system moves from one sequence step to another. Options for multiple backwash recipes enables side-by-side comparison of seasonal backwash strategies and supports filter tuning based on raw water quality. The outcome is a repeatable path to steadier filter performance, less day-to-day operator effort, and improved operational efficiency.