Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 1ST - 7TH JUNE 2018 | 17 Operations & Assets Wholesale Water Theatre Innovation Shop Window Anglian Water's initiative sought to encourage innovation across both the company and the supply chain. O ne of the key topics of conversation at Utility Week Live in the Wholesale Water Theatre was how to tackle leakage. Ofwat is challenging all water companies to stretch themselves further and has set the sector a reduction target of at least 15 per cent by 2025 as part of the upcoming price review, PR19 Steve Kaye, head of innovation at Anglian Water, gave a pres- entation in the Wholesale Water Theatre about how the company's Innovation Shop Window initiative is helping drive a "culture of open innovation and collaboration" across Anglian Water and its supply chain. Based in and around the town of Newmarket in Suffolk, it pro- vides a place to showcase the combined effect of existing and future innovation across the entire man-made water cycle, "from where we take water out of the ground, treat it and put it into our networks," Kaye said. Just like a shopkeeper putting all their best products in the shop window, Anglian is doing exactly that in Newmarket where it serves 22,000 customers. It is working with more than 100 organisations across 95 projects in the town, with successful projects then rolled out across the business. Kaye said: "The national average for leakage is probably still over 20 per cent. At Anglian we feel we're doing pretty well with 17 per cent and going downwards but when we talk to our customers we got quite a strong reaction – it's still too much. "So we've put a massive effort into reducing leakage through traditional resources, through technology and also by engaging our customers more significantly." He added: "Through having an engaging project like Shop Win- dow you can engage lots of suppliers to deliver innovation. For me, most of the innovation that exists in the water sector is in the supply chain – that's where the investment is being made. "By doing it in one area, which is what the shop window is all about, we can accelerate innovation. If we try to this everywhere in our huge region it would take a long time. Learning can be rolled out for the benefit of customers." Shop window goals Anglian Water has set itself seven goals to solve "the most challeng- ing questions" facing the industry. It said it doesn't yet know for certain how it will make the goals a reality – "it's a journey, but they are already positively transforming the way we work". The goals are: • 80 litres per person per day usage; • Zero leakage and bursts; • Build a circular economy; • Energy neutral; • Zero pollution and flooding; • 100 per cent compliant and chemical-free drinking water. • 100 per cent customer satisfaction Katey Pigden What we learnt… 1. Leakage Water companies at Utility Week Live dem- onstrated they are using a host of modern technology to tackle the issue of leakage. These techniques include electronic map- ping, drones, satellite imagery, hackathons and design sprints. United Utilities has enlisted the support of a sniffer dog, named Snipe, which has been specially trained in finding leaking water mains. The company is currently training more canine recruits, while Anglian Water has been approached about training owls to detect leaks. 2.  Unflushables in the sewer network The issue of unflushables in the network is a problem that can be "virtually eradicated" with 80 per cent of incidents – flooding, pollution, blockages – caused by human behaviour and not the performance of the network. Behaviour change programmes are often mistaken for simple awareness raising and are not given the "same level of importance or investment" as operational initiatives. 3. Data "Data is in our phones, in our hands and at our fingertips." Water companies should be making use of all types of analytics including descriptive, predictive and pre- scriptive – looking at what has happened, what could happen and defining outcomes. "Prescriptive analytics will support better decisions". But data isn't just about large sets of numbers – companies should be making sense of actionable data in the form of "unstructured text". 4.  Challenges are opportunities  Water companies should listen to the whole mixture of feedback from customers and act on the "tricky bits" and the "bits they don't agree with". They were also urged to view complaints as a "gift" and change complaints teams to service improvement teams. 5.  Drilling and tapping  Northumbrian Water won the Institute of Water's National Drilling and Tapping competition for the first time as the event celebrated its 30th year. Alan Dixon and Colin Pearson came first with a time of two minutes and 24 seconds. Northumbrian Water will go on to represent the UK in the ACE competition in Denver in June 2019, and in the World Water Cup in Amsterdam in November 2019. Bournemouth Water took second place, closely followed by Anglian Water in third place.

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