Water & Wastewater Treatment

16 | july 2014 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk The new approach has seen the number of leaks found per person per day increase by 40%. Project focus: Network leak reduction It is intended that the current partnership term will run until August 2015. Ultimately it appears there is little reason why Southern Water's model cannot be adopted by other water companies wanting to improve their leakage performance. Indeed, this innovative new partnership and incentive model can be applied to any service contract where input and outputs are relatively simple and can be measured and costed. Southern Water, PN Daly and RPS water won Partnership Initiative of the year award at the 2014 Water Industry Achievement Awards Before the partnership was formed in August 2012, Southern Water had a workforce of 82 looking for leaks. By October 2013 (the most recent figures) that number had dropped by 20% to 66, and yet the average number of leaks found per person per day had increased by 40%, from 0.73 to 1.03 leaks per man, per day. In short, a 40% improvement in performance delivered by a 20% smaller workforce. So what was the outcome? Well, for 2012-13 Ofwat set Southern Water a leakage target of losing no more than 90 million litres of water a day. The performance of the new partnership led to 81 million litres of water being leaked across its 13,000 km pipe network, smashing the target by a substantial 10%. Indeed, compared with the performance of two years ago when 96 million litres of water a day were being lost, it's an improvement of nearly 16%. Putting that into perspective, the initiative is saving 15 million litres of water a day – enough to supply a town the size of Crawley. The partnership's performance also means that by reducing leakage per property per day to 75.3 litres, Southern Water says it is now the best performing water and sewerage company – delivering an improvement of more than 40% on the national average. Clearly, over the period since project implementation, performance has improved significantly, as Gough confirms: "Initially there was a settling in period where people were getting used to the new processes. However, a˜er about two months there had been a 30% increase in performance. Since then, performance has continued to improve gradually to the point where we are now operating at near double the pre-contract levels." According to Southern Water there are three main secrets to its success in reducing leakage rates: the separation of any overheads from individual and vehicle rates, as this allows both the company and the partner security in the event of any change in resource numbers; the development of an incentive matrix that provides sufficient benefits and penalties for the partners to want to improve performance but still deliver savings for the company; and ensuring the right people are involved in developing the contract and the subsequent relationship between the partners. "Initially there was a settling in period where people were getting used to the new processes. How- ever, a er about two months there had been a 30% increase in performance" Meyrick Gough, Southern Water • What else? ● Sophisticated water meters manufactured by Arad Gladiator detect leaks on customer supply pipes automatically – the meters are the first of their type in the UK. In properties where the meters have been installed, leaks have been detected in 1.3%. With more than 500,000 such meters being installed by April 2015, the potential exists to save nearly 8 million litres of water each day – enough to supply the needs of 60,000 people, or a town the size of Ashford. ● Southern Water has commenced a three- year programme to replace all 6,000 of its flow and pressure data loggers with more sophisticated Technolog Cello models. These devices send information automatically to a control centre regarding flows and pressures which help detect leaks. The existing system reports only once a day but the new, advanced loggers report every 30 minutes, thus informing Southern Water of the flows and pressures across its network on a near real-time basis. When all 6,000 loggers have been installed, Southern Water estimates they will deliver extra savings in the region of £450,000 a year. www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | JULY 2014 | 17 DEHN protects. 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