Where should water companies invest their time, effort, money for the best return?
Danuela Sullivan
Global Water Sector Lead, Atos UK&, Atos
Asset Health Performance and outcome delivery incentives (ODI) outcomes
Addressing where should water companies invest their time, effort, money for the best return requires the understanding of how and where asset health performance will deliver the best ODI outcomes.
Ensuring that ODIs are enabled through technology
Technology delivery is the easy part. Impacting business outcomes and improving the reliability of assets through technology and digitisation, that is the most important element of all. How we utilise that technology and the data that is derived enables water companies to be confident in achieving and managing in line with the ODI targets.
Making the right big investment choices
It’s important that the role of asset health is understood in the context of risk to service and investment decision making. Prioritisation in line with cost to serve and penalty avoidance enables the appropriate focus on the right investments.
Increased value to customers
Better asset management is directly associated with improved water quality, reduced cost to serve and customer and developer experience. Customers tend to value service and outcomes as opposed to asset health, so it is important to show how asset health impacts service and demonstrate how investment can affect asset health, addressing the value chain from asset health through to customer service and business outcomes.
Zonal approach
A holistic investigation into the factors influencing performance in a water quality zone. By utilising all mains hydraulic modelling, engineering principles, statistical analysis and the experience and knowledge of local operations, the investigation can help identify the root cause of different aspects of poor performance. The outputs are qualitative and allow a targeted investment approach, which in turn lowers cost and drives value for money. This provides the ability to address the full water journey from “water source to customer tap” and fully understand the asset impacts.
Transforming relationships across the sector
Partnerships with technology partners are becoming key in the context of strategic planning, outcomes, business continuity as well as changing the way that we operate from employee through to customer. There are key opportunities for a broader engagement across industry with the energy sector. An example of this is the British Gas and Thames Water partnership to provide sustainable solutions for 1.8m customers, saving them time and money.
Scaling up innovation
Most water companies have been active in innovation forums, trailing, testing, and adopting technology; however, we are still on a journey to a clear step change in asset performance. There is considerable interest in technology for collecting and processing data and in big data and analytics. If we consider that an AMP period runs for 5 years and there is a belief that ROI on innovation often takes up to 5 years, then this does not encourage taking risk on new technology within the management periods.
