WET News

6 WET NEWS APRIL 2019 | wwtonline.co.uk United Utilities became the first water company in the UK to introduce large-scale artificial intelligence into its operational systems last year EMAGIN recently signed a two-year strategic partnership with Black & Veatch Water Europe that adds asset management and engineering knowhow to the former's HARVI artificial intelligence platform. Black & Veatch has since announced the launch of a Smart Maintenance business to support utility clients in the UK, which will be used to bridge the gap between strategic asset management support and hands-on implementation. "From our perspective as a technology company, we needed a strategic partner that has not only a large network and domain understanding but also the engineering expertise that can help us navigate through the market," Gaffoor says. Mark Kaney, Black & Veatch's asset management director for Europe, adds: "We realised it was something we could offer to our clients that would bring value. It's not just clever, it's not just innovative – there is something there that is a true value proposition. "Operational budgets and Totex amounts are getting smaller, so companies can't just keep throwing more and more money at this problem and hoping it will go away. Even if the money was there, it's not going to get it done. They need to find more of the problems. That's where predictive and prescriptive analytics comes in – the way to get ahead of that curve is to not have the problem in the first place." DATA ISSUES While the potential advantages are significant, there are challenges to overcome. One is that a significant amount of clean data is required to determine what 'normal' looks like before anomalies can be detected with precision. For many water companies, that might cause difficulties. Historical data may not contain all the necessary information, may be inaccurate, and may be scattered across different parts of the business. Ian Small, AECOM's innovation champion for civil infrastructure (EMEA), believes such issues mean it will take more than a decade to start reaping the full value of digital asset management. "It will have had an impact by the end of AMP7 in that the processes and ways of working will have changed, but I don't think we'll have realised the vast potential benefits," Small says. "We'll have organised, or be organising, the data. We'll have collected a lot more. The datasets won't be that long – while there are datasets that go back years, they're not very well organised, so it's a lot easier to just organise the data going forward. "Once you've got 10 years of data, starting from tomorrow, you'll be able to do a lot more with it." There is also work to do as BIM matures and shiœs focus from Capex to Opex. BIM – now oœen used to mean 'better information management' rather than 'building information modelling' – is seen as a key enabler for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), which is marked by the convergence of new technologies in fields including robotics, AI and IoT. Systems can be used to hold data on assets in ways that are both easy to understand and widely accessible, and the cross-industry BIM4Water group believes 80 per cent of BIM's benefits should come through the operational phase. However, while the water sector has made major progress in the use of graphical models as part of project delivery, the industry is still yet to get to grips with the need to effectively transfer the asset management information so that it can be used into the future. "AMP6 has been a little bit of a learning curve for the industry in how we might implement some of the digital techniques that are available," former BIM4Water chair Andrew Cowell says. "Primarily that's been focused on project delivery, but I think the dawning realisation is that the real benefit of digital is when we take that project delivery digital footprint into the asset management phase and the operational phase. We've run out of road in terms of project delivery and trying to cut capital costs there." As part of its efforts to explore where BIM can add value to the sector, BIM4Water set up an 'owner-operator group' that brings together all of the UK's water and sewerage companies, and its focus is on "whole life of asset knowledge and better business information management". That has helped influence the work of the standard libraries group, which is seeking to overcome the issues posed by varying data formats. "One of the common elements the water companies have struggled with is getting consistent data from the supply community about the products being provided, and one of things that's frustrated the supply community is that different companies ask for different product information," Cowell adds. "The standard libraries group has developed product data templates for different products. If we could get universal adoption of those, and templates for all the products being supplied, it would help to standardise delivery of digital information into asset management systems." BLENDED WORKFORCE Even with perfect data, the implementation of AI and machine learning technology demands cultural change within the business. Operational teams will need to learn to trust the guidance from the AI and act accordingly but, equally, the AI platform requires input from subject matter experts. The technology might detect an event in the data patterns, but that event could have a number of causes: it could come from asset failure, such as a burst pipe or pressure transient; it might be a process shiœ, such As the idea of the blended workforce takes root, the hope is that artificial intelligence will ultimately release staff to focus their attentions on identifying new solutions. "I can see a time where it'll be something your average engineer can do without needing any in-depth training," AECOM's Small says. "As automation becomes bigger and more ubiquitous in everything we do, the skills that engineers need will be more about being creative and who can design the best solution that the AI or automation can resolve." READY FOR THE FUTURE While there are different levels of readiness across the industry, it is clear that there is an urgent need for the whole sector to get to grips with digital asset management sooner rather than later. "Some water companies and some in the supply chain have really grasped this and are really moving forward at a pace, and others have sat back and waited to see where this is going to go," Cowell says. "With the digital movement, it's dangerous to sit back and wait and see where it goes because it's moving at a pace. It's a bit like swimming – unless you actually jump in, you're not going to learn to do it." While there have been challenges, United Utilities has enjoyed a relatively smooth implementation of the HARVI platform in large part because the company instilled an open- minded approach to adopting the technology and adapting its own processes. "They didn't just take the technology and assume it would drive efficiencies," Kaney says. as a new influent stream; it could be down to maintenance activity; or it might simply be that the sensor has failed. Similarly, until the technology gains an understanding of how the various data streams should behave in relation to each other, it might not realise an event such as sensor failure has occurred. Subject matter experts will be required to provide insight into the data patterns and teach the platform how to recognise failures and asset behaviour. Rather than replacing the existing workforce, the idea is to create a blended workforce that together can deliver the best possible solutions. "It's giving the AI the tools to do the job, like the way you would train a graduate, put them through a training programme and get them experience on different sides," Kaney says. "If you think of the AI as another component of your workforce, it has the ability and capability to learn, but we still need to teach it. You need the blend of the expertise with the AI's fast ability to pick it up." "I would expect that, in the next two or three years, we will see every water company in the UK using some form of AI in some form of their processing" Jeremy Heath, SES Water IN FOCUS DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT "As automation becomes bigger and more ubiquitous in everything we do, the skills that engineers need will be more about being creative" Ian Small,

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