As part of the City of Cleveland, Ohio, Division of Water (CWD) efforts to improve its service, a decision was made to improve reliability, efficiency, control and reporting at the pump stations. About five years ago, the author was given the privilege of spearheading the research, design and construction of a water pump station to test newer technologies and set the standard for the next century's designs. This required a change in the manner Cleveland pumps water. In other words, it required the designers to completely disregard the paradigms traditionally dictating pump selection, control, instrumentation, etc. The term 'resiliency engineering' has been recently used. This means that systems should be engineered to operate within acceptable parameters for long periods of time with minimum resource allocation after start-up. That is, a 'resilient system' bounces back and performs under less than optimal conditions such as those caused by lack of maintenance and change in operating conditions or customer demand. Although the authors were not aware of the term 'resiliency engineering' five years ago, they inadvertently followed that philosophy because their research and interviews of operations' personnel identified a need for such a design strategy. In researching the subject of pump station design, they acquired data from textbooks, articles, equipment manufacturers, other pump station designs, relevant equipment installations, standards, operational needs and requirements, and listened to operators and maintenance personnel's complaints. The result was about one hundred pages of dos and don'ts. Two pump stations have been designed and built using this recipe to date. A third pump station is presently under design. This paper discusses some of the lessons learned. Includes 13 references, figures.