Utility Week

27 ISSUE 02 FEB/2019 // You're cutting out those really long roadmaps. It means you avoid building a solution that wasn't worth building in the first place. You figure out 'is this thing worth building?' very quickly and very cheaply // Jennifer Torry, innovation consultant solution that wasn't worth building in the first place. You figure out 'is this thing worth building?' very quickly and very cheaply," she adds. At the moment, the problems Bluewave tackles come from senior management, or are suggested by the operational teams, but the goal is to build a platform for wider staff engagement. e outcome they want to achieve is to improve efficiencies and customer services and bring down bills for customers, in line with Ofwat's edicts. "We're looking at a very broad change. e ultimate strategy is to create a water-resilient future for the South East," says Ford. Southern is on a quest to raise its performance in a number of areas, driven by new chief executive Ian McAulay, who joined the business in 2017, followed by a number of senior hires from outside the sector to usher in new ideas. Ford comes from a telecoms background; his previous role was managing director of commercial, digital and strategy at BT Business. It is relatively early days under the new management and business plans have a long gestation period. It's certainly far too early to have a major impact on the business, but a lot is resting on it. Southern was one of the water companies Ofwat asked to rework its PR19 business plan, when it published its initial assessments at the end of January. e water company knows new ways of thinking are essential if it's to regularly get top marks from the regulator in the future. Southern has earmarked £50 million in efficiency savings off the back of innovation. Its Brighton team has a focus on digitalising processes, including those of site officers in the field. It has 25 R&D projects on the go currently, with many directed at improving the environment and resilience in what is one of the UK's water-stressed areas. Elin Williamson, Southern Water's research and development manager, explains the approach to its removal of phosphorus – one of its compliance factors – which is a huge challenge for the organisation and the sector. e chemical gets into water sources in the catchment from fertilisers used by farmers. It is working to tackle these issues on a number of fronts and different timescales. Firstly, explains Williamson, they are working with farmers in the catchment to help them change their methods to remove the chemical at source. Secondly, the team is looking at how they can recover phosphorous at various sites across the region – this includes a project with Microvi Biotech Inc, WesTech Engineering Inc and the University of Portsmouth from its Environmental Technology Field Station near Petersfield, Hampshire. e goal is to reduce total phosphorus to levels below 0.1 milligrams per litre for wastewater treatment plants. Southern is also the only UK water company to be working as part of the EU- backed NEREUS Project, which involves collaborating with other water companies, research organisations, consultants and universities across Europe, to find ways of recovering water, energy and nutrients from wastewater – including phosphorous. Drew Brown, project manager in research and development, says the recovery research is an example of circular economy thinking around the business. "We're trying a technology from the Netherlands for the next three months, looking at the recovering of calcium phosphate and also struvite – which crystallises and blocks pipes." Another strand to the work is on the operational side to improve the way permits can be monitored digitally by on- site operators. Richard Scott, Southern Water's innovation lead, explains: " e site permit is an outline – it's held on every site, often in a paper format. e metrics we hit are digitised, but to accelerate we want to put this information on tablets for our site officers so they can see what's going on across the business." e innovation team is using basic off- the-shelf applications – including Google sheets – which it can learn from. Once there is evidence that the methodology is beneficial, it will develop a full rollout with the IT department. It's also looking at similar process improvement around maintenance and weather data. Williamson's role is focused on longer- term change: "Some of the more progressive things we've been trialling are how we use new sensory technology to make smarter decisions. We've got a device called Smart Ball, which you put down your pipe, and it sends off lots of different sensors to assess the condition of your mains. It can be used on wastewater or the water side to see what condition the pipes are in, without having to actually dig up the road." At the other end of the scale, and in search of a few key quick wins, Southern Water is trialling an asset scanner. Says Hazel Maxwell, innovation manager: "At the moment, when people on site need to report an issue with a piece of equipment, it's more onerous than we'd like it to be identifying the asset, raising the request and getting someone along to fix it. " e asset scanner scans a QR code on a mobile phone and pre-populates the form that needs to be filled in to raise a work order. It reduces the time from 15 minutes to about two minutes." Adds Ford: "Digitalising the task this way means what you start to build is much better, relevant, real-time data insights around which bits of equipment are working most efficiently, and where are you having most repairs – it could be a certain make or type, it could be kit of a certain age." Going forward, Ford says the biggest challenge for the Bluewave innovation project will be "how we engage the Southern Water employee base to do things differently" while at the same time maintaining a strong focus on compliance. "Obviously, we've got to make sure that drinking water is of the right standard, so there can be a resistance to change because of the risk of failure. It means that everything we do is researched and carried out in a very controlled fashion."

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