Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/1006919
www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | AUGUST 2018 | 13 concluding day of the festival. "The really successful, innovative companies that we could all name, such as Google or Microso, believe that the best innovation happens when you are open, and put your work and your challenges out there for other people to come and add something to. We wanted to know what would happen if we invited a much bigger group of people than a typical event and had a much bigger ecosystem; and secondly, what would happen if you did it with a festival vibe when people were in creative, playful, mode. "We've invited all the water companies here, but also many other innovative companies and people from other sectors, and many people have come who are new to us. It's produced a great richness and diversity of ideas. The festival is double the size this year – and who knows where it will go next?" One of the sprints, with the title 'Going Deeper Underground' and sponsored by Ordnance Survey, worked on the possibil- ity of creating an underground map of the UK showing all the water, sewerage, power and telecoms assets. The sprint team managed to produce an initial version of the underground map and a plan for how it might be further developed. With Northern Gas Networks, Northern Powergrid and BT Openreach all involved in the festival, the event was the ideal springboard for such pan-utility collaboration. Meanwhile, the 'Green Planet' sprint, sponsored by BT and aimed at finding so- lutions for sustainability and carbon neu- trality, came up with the idea of gathering dog waste from across the Northumbrian region and using it as additional fuel for anaerobic digestion plants. The developed solution focused on the practicalities of Festival sprints Challenges set for the festival participants included: (sponsor/partner organisation in brackets) 1 Starting from scratch – how do you create the perfect water company? (IBM) 2 Going deeper underground – can we build an underground map of the UK? (Ordnance Survey) 3 Smart objectives – making the most of smart technology (CGI) 4 Fans for life – how to build advocacy with communities and customers (Explain Market Research) 5 Testing the water – how can the use of digital twins improve our future? (Newcastle University) 6 Moving on – what will the future of transport look like? (Northern Gas Networks) 7 Green Planet – how can we become a carbon positive company? (BT) 8 Smiling happy people power – how can we create a happier, more productive workforce? (O2) 9 Building Blocks – how can innovation and tech improve design, construction, operation and maintenance? (Interserve) 10 Vision of the future – how can we improve the lives of people who are visually impaired? 11 Every drop counts – how and why do we need to save water? (Waterwise/Big Bang) 12 Blue Planet – how can we reduce the impact of single-use plastics? (Isle Utilities) 13 Year of Green Action – what can nature do for you and your business? (Durham University) Several thousand people attended the festival over the five days TV's Alexander Armstrong opened the festival and visited the sprints at work collecting the waste and how dog owners and councils could be engaged with such a scheme. Festival organiser and NWG IS group director Nigel Watson said: "It's been an incredible and amazing week. We've seen people come from all over the world to