Water innovation fund ‘should target JVs’

Utility Week talks to Northumbrian Water’s head of innovation, Angela MacOscar, about what lessons she has brought across from her previous role tracking new trends in consumer goods. She discusses her hopes for Ofwat’s innovation fund, how facial recognition tools could help with mental wellbeing and how 2020 could be the year AI lives up to the hype.

Ofwat’s £200 million innovation competition should be directed towards collaborations aimed at tackling the big issues for the water sector.

This is the view of Angela MacOscar, who joined Northumbrian Water last year as the group’s first head of innovation.

Ofwat announced details of the fund in its final determinations on PR19 last month, saying it would work with the industry to “set this up in a way that benefits customers as much as possible”.

MacOscar welcomed the announcement, saying: “It could be played out in a number of different ways. My wish for it would be that we make a dent in some of the biggest challenges we all face and that it will foster a real collaborative culture. That seems a better direction to go rather than picking it off on very niche projects that look exciting but might not actually solve a real problem.

“We should be looking at things like flooding, water poverty, wet wipes down the drain. Then putting our heads together to use innovation and find a way forward. If we can use this to come together as a collective then it can be a stimulus to show the best of the industry.”

She also stressed that in order to ensure innovation was at the heart of all business plans, the regulatory regime would have to adapt to take a longer-term view.

She added: “The water sector isn’t set up like a corporate entity which can look as far into the future as it wants but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a lighthouse view of where you want to get to and cut that up into five-year chunks. You ultimately have to work with what you’ve got.

“But going forward, Ofwat is on the innovation journey with us and will also have to adapt. That could include its approach to timeframes.”

MacOscar’s career up to this point had been in FMCG, including 17 years at Proctor & Gamble.

She said gaining an edge through innovation was no longer the preserve of these kind of industries.

She added: “If you look at the targets the water sector has been set, and has set itself, over the next few years, they are not going to be possible without innovation. Talking to colleagues in other water companies, everybody is now in the same space that innovation is becoming more business as usual. It’s part of everyone’s role.”

However, she admitted that the water sector is faced with the challenge of legacy infrastructure, asking “how do you retrofit innovation”?

Northumbrian runs an annual innovation festival, in which it works with a wide range of partners to tackle challenges both integral to the water sector and related to the wider community. Projects resulting from the festival have included mapping the sewer system and 5g powered sewer sensors.

In the coming year, MacOscar sees several test hubs of innovation emerging into the mainstream.

As an example, she believes 2020 will be “the year where AI will finally start to live up to the hype and deliver real limitless business benefits”.

She added: “Most people are familiar with the security tests online where you have to identify traffic lights or bridges to prove you’re not a robot. Well, they’ve now created bots that can pass those tests.  So, we’re wanting to harness that technology to speed up our ability to detect assets and also in the health and safety space – to be able to have cameras on site to help spots hazards. There’s a whole host of ways in which we can creatively use the increase in recognition technology.”

Physical monitoring equipment, or “wearables”, is another area where Northumbrian is harnessing the potential of innovation and technology.

MacOscar said the key focus was in mental wellbeing and finding innovative ways to check whether its more than 1,000 field workers are struggling with issues related to isolation.

She said: “There are a number of ways we are doing this – some of it is from facial recognition – being able to pick up on micro-movements in the face to better understand people’s emotional state. It could be that through the likes of heart monitoring you can see when people are peaking and troughing – that could be very useful for drivers for example.”

There is also the potential to have a short daily questionnaire for all employees gauging how they are feeling on a particular day – giving them the opportunity to raise any concerns.

MacOscar stressed that all these initiatives would be entirely optional.

On the wider approach to innovation, MacOscar said: “Even in my previous role, we weren’t looking to be trailblazers – we were looking at other sectors in order to have trickle down technology. There’s no shame in letting other people do the heavy-lifting for you.

“I’m very happy for our friends in Silicon Valley, those who are looking into space, the amazing work being done in medicine to be at that cutting edge. For us it’s about horizon scanning and spotting the things that could have an impact on what we do. There are a lot of exciting ideas out there but a great deal of them won’t ever get off the drawing board.”