Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | MAY 2021 | 37 Operational Excellence While geospatial, asset and work man- agement data provide vital information to field engineers, the combination can also empower back office teams. "By helping to break down data silos and providing real-time insights about daily work, planners, supervisors and back office staff are well positioned to make better, more informed decisions," says Potchinsky. "The benefits of accurate, convergent data plays in both directions, out to the field and then feeding back into the organisation for use in analytics, forecasting and reporting," he adds. Data-driven For example, engineers' digital mobile apps capture a wide range of user activity and asset information as they perform jobs. "This could include data about how long it takes to travel to a job and the duration of the work. It helps to inform management in making deci- sions about vehicles, routing, job scheduling and training for engineers. You can analyse works data to get more accurate figures for the cost of a job, and use it for forecasting and evaluating individual and team perfor- mance," Potchinsky says. On the wastewater side at Thames Water, the ambition is to install up to 50,000 sewer depth monitors. "That allows us to gather almost real-time information about the flow going and to spot when it might be block- ing," says Martin Perrin, head of wastewater asset management at Thames Water, "rather than investing based on historical problems, we want to predict where it's likely to occur." The company will treble sewer cleaning in each year of AMP7: it tackled 600km a year on average in AMP6 rising to 1,800km a year in the current cycle. Perrin's thorny challenge is to generate data to demonstrate to Ofwat the value over the long term of an asset investment made today. "I want to use accurate modelling and asset data to demonstrate a clear link between underinvesting now and implica- tions for the future. I'd like to unlock it. Can we show the level of investment required today to make assets resilient for the future? Right now, across the industry, I don't think we can," Perrin says. Policy impact The challenges read across to power, in that companies are exploring new ways of work- ing with data to optimise delivery of asset investments. Here, the beat of policy objec- tives coming from Number 10 suggests a diz- zying change trajectory ahead. The Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution, published in November 2020, directly impacts distribution networks. It outlines a ban on sales of new combustion engine cars and vans by 2030, a target to roll out 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028, and support for hydrogen production. Hot on its tail came the Energy White Paper: Powering Our Net Zero Future, last December. It flags a forthcoming consulta- tion "on whether it is appropriate to end gas grid connections on new homes built from 2025, in favour of clean energy alternatives". And it says: "Electricity is the key enabler for the transition away from fossil fuels and de-carbonising the economy cost-effectively by 2050." Such a fast-paced policy agenda impacts distribution networks' asset planning and is shaping submissions to Ofgem for RIIO-ED2 (2023-28). "My job used to be a straightfor- ward extrapolation working from historic patterns of use. I can't do that any more. We've been piloting new forecasting capa- bilities during the past five years," says Ben Godfrey, network strategy manager at West- ern Power Distribution. Of the several big problems vexing the networks is how to plan for the extra demand that will come from electric cars and heat pumps. "We have reached a tipping point now on electric vehicles, with new cool Toyo- tas, Teslas and Porches – people want it. We are looking at how to accommodate that new demand at the same time as getting the best of the existing network," Godfrey says. This involves investigating network load- ing data, and overlaying external datasets such as local council plans and forecasts of likely consumer behaviour. "Where will the low carbon technology hotspots be? Where will be the leading uptake of new technol- ogy?" Godfrey says. Investment plans will be affected by size of asset too. "We have 160,000 distribution substations – kiosks at the end of the road – where we could replace with a larger asset, if our forecasting shows a leading number of electric cars or heat pumps in the area," Godfrey says. While day-to-day asset maintenance jobs continue, momentum is building behind the transition from straight distribution network operator to a more systems-based approach. "Complex modelling based on future infor- mation has not been in the business before. We are bringing in a wide range, not just of traditional engineers and scientists, but also of data analysts — and we expect higher investment in this year on year. It will affect fieldwork in that we expect a greater number of interventions and then for the gap before replacing the asset to be a lot longer," God- frey adds. "We integrate and investigate all our systems to reveal anomalies …and target intervention." James Worthington, head of planned works and asset health, drinking water, Anglian Water "Intuitive design, streamlined digital processes and ease-of-use in the field are big factors in letting contractors use their own device and get on with the job." Stuart Potchinsky, product director, AMT-Sybex in association with "How do you bring in financial data to understand, at a very detailed level, the cost per job? No-one has really cracked that." Tim McMahon, head of water asset management at Thames Water "Can we show the level of investment required today to make assets resilient for the future? Right now, across the industry, I don't think we can." Martin Perrin, head of wastewater asset management, Thames Water To read the report 0 to 60: Speed of Change to Accelerate in Asset Planning and Fieldwork, please visit the downloads page at: utilityweek.co.uk

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