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40 | NOVEMBER 2020 | UTILITY WEEK Operational Excellence Event Network Asset Performance Conference Smarter use of data is the key to overcoming asset management challenges, but is the industry's underlying data quality up to scratch? Jane Gray report on debate at the Network Asset Performance Conference 2020. C ouple ageing asset bases with increas- ingly demanding regulation, disrup- tion from coronavirus and threats from climate change, and you can be le in little doubt that the life of the asset management professional in the utilities sector today is far from easy. At Utility Week's recent Network Asset Performance Conference (held in association with ABB, Copperleaf, Hitachi, S&C Electric Company, and Schneider Electric), senior asset management and strategy leaders from across the sector gathered to share insights into how they are rising to these combined challenges to create greater confidence around asset intervention decisions – both in the interests of short-term reliability and long-term resilience. Through presentations, panel discussion and networking sessions on the virtual event platform, a common theme quickly emerged in the focus on better use of a wider variety of data as the foundation stone for achieving this confidence. The very immediate pressures created by coronavirus for sustaining asset performance and informed decision making, unsurpris- ingly took up a fair portion of the agenda, with companies from across the gas and electricity industries sharing how they have adapted working practices, especially in relation to asset inspection and maintenance activities. The use of drones and reliance on data generated from remote telemetry have increased across the board as companies have moved to limit the number of field oper- atives visiting sites, while still trying to care- fully manage asset risk. Speakers also agreed that the pandemic experience has heightened an appreciation of the strategic value in digitalising field pro- cesses, both because operatives' productivity has been increasingly precious, and because of a heightened awareness of the need for a quick return of reliable data into core sys- tems. In this environment, the inefficiencies and data quality issues inherent in paper- based field processes have felt all the more painful. Looking to longer-term asset performance challenges, those posed by climate change dominated the two days of the conference, with speakers and delegates raising issues around the difficulties of forming investment strategies where policy frameworks make future expectations their assets unclear, and the difficulty of accounting for increas- ing extreme weather incidents on asset risk models. The policy uncertainty issue is clearly most keenly felt by gas networks, where the pathway to decarbonising heat remains frus- tratingly unclear. As speakers highlighted, this makes it hard to make decisions about investments that would prepare the network for hydrogen, because without a clear policy signal, the cost-value profile of "hydrogen- ready" technologies simply doesn't stack up. In the meantime, there's a focus on gathering detailed data about the impact of introducing increasing volumes of hydrogen into the existing asset base – with especially keen attention being paid to the performance of valves and compressors. More generally, industry presentations at the conference painted a very positive picture of progress in developing sophisticated asset data strate- gies to support short and long-term perfor- mance. But a keynote from Ofgem's chief engineer, Peter Bingham, ensured there was no room for the tone of the event to become self-congratulatory. Speaking about the framework for RIIO2 and its focus on delivering a least-cost delivery of the UK's net zero commitment, Bingham touched on the importance of the new Network Asset Risk Measures (NARMs) as a key part of establishing companies' baseline funding. Acknowledging some of the "negative feedback" which the RIIO2 dra determina- tions for gas and transmission networks have had, Bingham pushed back, saying com- panies had not helped themselves achieve better business plan reviews by generally overestimating asset health data throughout the RIIO1 period in a way that made it dif- ficult for them to justify RIIO2 interventions under the NARMs approach. "If you put garbage in, you get garbage out," reflected Bingham. While some net- work leaders would be tempted to dwell more on the outputs end of this equation, the implication is clear that networks have some way still to go in improving the quality and consistency of the asset data as a foun- dation for reliable performance in an uncer- tain world. Jane Gray, content director