British Water’s Innovation Exchange meetings seek to marry cutting-edge suppliers with water companies. Steed Wedzell saw the process in action with Thames Water at Utility Week Live.

Taking place alongside Utility Week Live at the NEC in April 2015, British Water staged the latest in a highly successful series of Innovation Exchange events.

The events are designed to match the UK’s best technologies with new and emerging applications at the water companies. This time, it was the turn of Thames Water, and its three alliances: the non-infrastructure alliance, eight2O; the infrastructure alliance, TW, Agility & KCD; and the Deephams project alliance, AMK.

Prior to the event, the Thames Water alliances were asked by British Water to select topic areas where it was thought innovation could provide benefits. British Water then went out to the supply chain, both members and non-members, to see which companies had innovations that could potentially satisfy the specified criteria.

The selected companies were invited to deliver presentations in three workshops, one for each Thames Water alliance, with timings facilitated by nominated representatives.

“Each supplier has ten minutes to stand up, introduce themselves, introduce their innovation and explain the benefits that can be delivered,” explained Paul Mullord, UK director at British Water, as he introduced the event. “The client uses a traffic light system to declare interest: a green, amber or red response is given depending on the potential of the technology being presented. Total honesty is requested at all times.”

Of course, once a supplier has successfully engaged with one water company, it becomes much easier to talk to others.

“The concept works really well,” said Mullord. “We know this because the first 18 Innovation Exchanges have delivered nearly 630 ten-minute presentations in 65 separate workshops, and the indications are very positive. The last Innovation Exchange with Severn Trent saw 80 per cent of the 49 suppliers given a green response, with 10 per cent receiving amber, and 10 per cent red.”

So, what were the three Thames Water alliances looking for from the latest British Water Innovation Exchange?

Steed Wedzell is a freelance journalist

Capital delivery alliance: eight2O

Keith Wishart, head of innovation for eight2O, Thames Water’s capital delivery alliance for AMP6, said successful innovation had to centre on what he described as “no-build solutions”.

“In the two years since eight2O was established we’ve been looking for opportunities to outperform the programme, and we’ve done that through a series of efficiency levers that effectively represent collections of ideas,” he explained. “Some of the ideas we’ve been looking at include offsite construction techniques – examining how much we can assemble before arriving on site. This embraces concepts such as modular build and the use of standardised products.”

The eight2O alliance has also looked at how it can apply lean techniques across the programme, in the same way that the manufacturing industry has done to great effect.

Other ideas include on-site process technology and how expensive and less sustainable dosing techniques can be avoided, as well as a number of thoughts on networking and monitoring water and wastewater processes.

“We are also scrutinising data analytics and getting a much better understanding of our assets and their performance, and what we can do to  drive outperformance,” said Wishart. “For example, ways of better predicting a sewage and pollution event before it actually occurs, and taking preventative steps to avoid it happening.”

This is an interesting example because eight2O is a totex organisation. In effect, this means it is not there simply to deliver capital objectives, but is driven by operational savings and customer outcomes.

“In the past couple of years we’ve already driven a significant level of saving into the programme,” stated Wishart. “Overall we’re looking to take around £400 million off our total budget within the capital programme. At the moment, we have quite a healthy pipeline of ideas that’s driving very close to that figure, but it doesn’t cover everything. The Innovation Exchange is about the things we don’t yet know. As a result, we sent British Water a list of what we call our innovation challenges.”

According to Wishart, examples from the list include trenchless technology – eight2O needs to complete around 800km of mains rehabilitation and renewal, as well as laying new mains during the AMP period.

“At present, we’re planning on doing around 40 per cent of that using trenchless technologies, but we’re keen on learning what can be done to drive that closer to 60 or 70 per cent,” he revealed.

Innovation solutions for eight2O

Among the innovations presented to the non-infrastructure alliance included those pertaining to trenchless technology, namely ways to save time and reduce customer impact, while others centred on minimising interruptions to water supply – reducing both capital expenditure and the impact on customers.

There was some focus on large water process plants and ways to minimise the impact of works at five major water treatment works in London. Other innovations of note focused on minimising over-chlorination and ways of delivering more efficient chlorination and de-chlorination, with the goal of standardising best practice.

Among those making presentations were Amazon Filters, Nivus, Hydro International, Modern Water Monitoring, My Private Ark, Evoqua Water Technologies, Andritz, Gurney Environmental and Hach Lange

Project alliance: AMK

Oisin Gibson from the Deephams project alliance, which centres on the upgrade of a major sewage treatment works in Enfield, expressed a keen desire to find innovations to aid this major project, which was initiated in November 2013.

“We’ve been busy upgrading two-thirds of the existing site and introducing a bypass for fixed film activated sludge,” Gibson explained. “We’re going to push all of the flow through those two streams on a temporary basis over the next two years, which will enable us to build a new section of the plant on the existing northern area of the site.”

Once that is commissioned, AMK will work on the remaining section of the site.

“Stream A is due to start construction very soon as part of a total programme that will continue until the end of 2018,” said Gibson. “Even though we’ve already been in touch with a lot of the supply chain and started our procurement process, we’re looking for more innovation – solutions that will make it safer to build, cheaper to run, and make it a better quality plant. Two key areas are operational cost (energy) and carbon savings.”

Innovation solutions for AMK

Among the companies presenting to AMK were ABS, Advanced Water & Waste (The A+ Group), Andritz, Aqualogy Environment, Carlow Precast Tanks, Naylor Environmental, Partech Electronics, Euroby, Nivus, Secure Meters, Siltbuster Process Solutions, Torishima Energy Systems and Veolia Water Technologies.

The solutions focused on everything from operational cost, energy and carbon footprint reductions, through to non-infrastructure innovation and the adoption of technology from other industries.

Infrastructure alliance: TW, Agility & KCD

Graham Lunt, the lead for Thames Water’s infrastructure alliance, said the role for TW, Agility & KCD, was pretty much like a day job centring on leak detection, repair, maintenance, new connections and new mains. However, the focus moving forward was on customer service.

Said Lunt: “The alliance partners came together at the end of a procurement process in December 2014. We became the preferred bidder in the first week in December, signed contracts on the 30 January, and started live operations on 30 March. We’ve done that across 24 sites without any dip in customer service performance.”

Thames Water sets three key stipulations for the alliance. The first is the budget, which is driven by the financial determination from Ofwat. That budget is fixed, the outcomes are fixed, and the performance commitments are also fixed. Furthermore, the incentives for all of the alliance partners are identical.

“The second mandate is the visions and values of Thames Water, and we’ve done a lot of work to ensure these reflect what the employees want,” explained Lunt. “The third mandate is our brand – we will now be branded solely as Thames Water to our 8.5 million clean water customers.”

There are also three main performance and service commitments.

“First, we must improve our CSAT performance and raise our position in the pack as measured by Ofwat, and we must ensure that performance is perceived by our customers and the regulator to improve,” said Lunt. “The second is that we have a very stringent leakage target, which we need to outperform, and the third is being better at overcoming supply interruptions.”

The alliance is now looking to the supply chain for help in delivering its performance commitments.

“We’re not only seeking support with innovations that will help get assets into the right condition and operate them in the right manner, but solutions that will enable us to deliver a good service to our customers,” he said. “It’s not just about pipes, or water quality, it’s about service reliability.”

Innovation solutions for TW, Agility & KCD

Network optimisation proved to be one of the central themes of the workshop for Thames Water’s infrastructure alliance. Innovations centring on leakage detection, pressure and surge management were core topics. Also featuring heavily were solutions for logging, pumping, zonal and district metering, data collection and analysis, and CCTV surveying.

Other presentation subjects included zero excavation and zero interruption to customer supplies, as well as ideas to benefit street works, traffic management, sustainable urban drainage systems and permanent reinstatement.

Companies pitching their innovations included Acoustic Sensing Technology, Grundfos, Noreva, Stuart Turner Ltd, Syrinix, Aqualogy Environment, Metasphere, Impact Solutions and William Hackett Chains.