Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | MAY 2021 | 33 Operational Excellence replicate it with other water companies when they are commercially ready." As well as being a stage for developing technologies, it also lets the team under- stand better how to talk to customers, to understand them and research strategies to in uence behaviour around water. This has been essential to the Love Every Drop campaign, which has an aspirational per capita consumption target of 80 litres. While this was purposefully ambitious, some resi- dents surpassed that goal and the average in the area was 104 litres per person per day, pre-Covid. Bene‚ ts to the wider industry of a live testbed include supply chain partners devel- oping ideas to a commercial level that can then be shared with other companies as a case study. Industry-wide bene ts Collaboration and innovation have been key themes for the sector with regards to net zero goals, leakage and reducing consumption – and Ofwat's innovation fund and compe- tition has been focal to this. Last year the sector, coordinated by UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR), began plans for a water Centre of Excellence. Tucker believes that Shop Window has a crucial part to play. He describes how coordination and col- laboration has grown and brought the sector together in key areas of priorities. One such is process emissions in wastewater treat- ment, with the redevelopment of the Cam- bridge wastewater treatment plant, which is within the Shop Window area. In the revamped design there will be opportunities to incorporate innovative processes with the sole aim of driving down emissions, which Tucker says will bene‚ t the whole industry. Taking the project even further, the company has been in discussions with the Department for International Trade to discuss making the Shop Window a way to broadcast to the world the capabilities and opportuni- ties that the British water industry and its supply chain could potentially export. "If anyone in the world wants to see an example of sustainable development, it's usually a suburb of Stockholm called Ham- marby where the rest of the world has for the past decade pointed their ‚ nger," Tucker explains. "Our ambition through the work in Newmarket, the wastewater treatment works and the contribution to further develop Cam- bridge, is that it will be the new Hammarby. When people ask to see world class sustain- able development they will look to us. That's how successful I'd like us to be with this." Ruth Williams, water correspondent "It's so exciting to listen to not only the enthusiasm and the ambition but also the fantastic ideas that the fresh generational eyes and perspective can bring." JASON TUCKER, DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC DELIVERY AND COMMERCIAL, ANGLIAN WATER "Collaboration is key to what we do. Shop Window's success is based on those who engage with it." FIONN BOYLE. BOYLE, SHOP WINDOW MANAGER, ANGLIAN WATER A s utilities move closer towards digitising their services, the need for high quality interconnected data is greatly increased. The supply, maintenance and billing are all centred on address data, so accuracy here is pivotal in linking the di— erent datasets in the drive for e˜ ciency and increased revenue. With address data as the central focus, utilities need to consider: 1) The accuracy of their address data 2) The unique address anchor that can be used to verify and link addresses from any system or department. With the millions of address changes recorded by GeoPlace every six weeks, it's critical to maintain accuracy once you have it. Až er all, out of date addresses are going to result in incorrect billing, leading to unpaid bills, problems switching supplier and therefore incurring compensation costs and the inability to reconcile di— erent systems. The ‚ rst step towards tackling this is to match and cleanse your address data against a data source that uses the British Standard BS7666. Ordnance Survey's AddressBase Premium (ABP) dataset gives you: • The Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) – the anchor for your addresses. • The geo coordinates of an address giving you pinpoint precision. • Local aliases. • The full life cycle of a property from build to demolition including any address changes. ABP is continually updated, and due to its richness is increasingly being adopted as the standard across both the public and private sectors. By matching against the adopted address standard in ABP, you'll identify which addresses are good and which need cleansing. You can then store the UPRNs against the addresses in your legacy system, providing the anchor to verify addresses, and link them to di— erent systems. Once your data is cleansed you'll want to keep it that way. By utilising an address data management solution you can automate the six-weekly updates from ABP and keep the cleansed addresses held in your systems up to date automatically. Finally, you'll want to ensure the recording of an address within a business transaction is accurate, eg an invoice request or a supplier switch. By using an address lookup tool, it will draw the address from your master address source that's now kept up to date and held in the British Standard BS7666. Optimising your address data, and using the UPRN as the anchor to link systems is key to maximising e˜ ciency. At Aligned Assets, we have more than 25 years' experience delivering cutting-edge address data solutions ranging from high speed matching and cleansing, to sub-second predictive searching, as well as solutions for managing and sharing address data with any team or operational system. To get your address data up to speed, drop us a line to schedule a demo. Visit: aligned-assets.co.uk/ tech-talk-utilities DINESH THANIGASALAM, COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR, ALIGNED ASSETS Optimising address data to drive effi ciency Tech Talk Sponsored content brought to you by

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