Pairing people and ‘deep tech’ to enable a smart water revolution

Experts from Northumbrian and Wessex Water, Isle Utilities and Ofwat gauge the balance between tech and talent in the next wave of smart water innovation projects.

Speaking at Utility Week WWT’s Smart Water Conference 2022, Ofwat’s director for regulatory policy, Harry Armstrong, explained that the regulator can play a key role in driving innovation in the current marketplace – and ultimately shaping the water industry’s smart tech revolution.

Alongside the Ofwat Innovation Fund – designed to foster a culture around innovation and deliver a “step change” in the way the sector is run and what it can achieve – he flagged a number of cultural and tech enablers that he believed will increase the water sector’s capacity to innovate. These span openness, adaptability, managing innovation risk, scalability and deployability and pushing a long-term focus.

He also described collaboration as a “really important enabler”, with the majority of projects funded by Ofwat’s two competitions since October 2020 involving four or more partners.

However, forecasting the Ofwat Innovation Fund’s post-pilot phase between 2022 and 2025, Armstrong added that innovation will be augmented by learning and collaboration on shared problems with firms in other sectors, greater pace of innovation and the ability to “fail fast”, and openness to new perspectives and voices.

While harnessing technology and talent will be crucial in this forthcoming phase, how can they dovetail to propel the utilities sector towards further smart innovation?

‘Deep tech’ fueling innovation

Offering a mid-AMP assessment of the water sector’s “smart” revolution, Isle Utilities CEO Ben Tam explained that the period’s innovation thus far had been shaped by challenges such as the rocketing price of water, increased creation costs, and the need to protect the environment.

And in terms of early successes, he highlighted the advent of smart networks, including the smart meter rollout and bolstered communications infrastructure; new frameworks facilitating competitive collaboration; sensors, for example in maintaining water quality; the Ofwat Innovation fund which has helped “pick off” challenges that have previously been too difficult to fund, and the rollout of digital twins across water and wastewater networks.

What’s more, off the back of tens of millions of pounds worth of investment across customer-facing innovation, wastewater monitoring, water networks, engineering design and ensuring regulatory compliance, Tam forecast that the rollout of smart technology will continue to gather pace.

For example, ever-changing customer engagement will necessitate new innovation, alongside the need for enhanced health monitoring, with the Covid pandemic necessitating improvements in water-based epidemiology.

On top of this he explained that climate impact reduction will continue to drive innovation and build accelerated business cases to meet net zero, in addition to new, data-led, business models to fuel resource recovery, water neutrality and water offsetting.

Fundamentally, Tam believes that “deep tech” – the term used for advanced technology based on specific engineering innovation or scientific discoveries and not geared towards end-user services – holds the key to continued success.

He explained that this offers “hard” engineering and original science to solve problems, and that successful ventures will be problem orientated, operate at the convergence of multiple technologies – 96% of deep tech ventures use at least one technology, he explains – build a physical product, and form the heart of deep “ecosystems”.

Innovation as ‘business as usual’

However, while advances in “deep tech” offer a platform for innovation rooted in science and engineering, Beatrice Martin, head of clean water at Xylem Water Solutions UK, added that talent is often more important than technology in driving change.

As such, creating the right environments for innovation to thrive is essential in helping utilities harness a wealth of knowledge, creativity and ultimately technology according to Angela MacOscar, head of innovation at Northumbrian Water.

However, she explained that creating a culture of innovation hinges upon providing adequate time, space, training and tools.

With this in mind, Northumbrian Water has created an Innovation Ambassadors Group as it bids to incorporate a number of new, innovation stimulating behaviours, into “business as usual” and encourage necessary buy-in from senior leaders, for example.

MacOscar also stressed the importance of utility firms better reflecting customer bases in their workforces in order to maximise innovation, and that bringing new people from different backgrounds on board offered invaluable access to new and different networks.

Two-way communication

As an example of a successful tech and talent pairing, Wessex Water’s strategic digital manager, Adam Bear, explained that his firm’s incorporation of enhanced building information modelling (BIM) technology has been a central pillar of its operations and collaboration strategy and seen the firm augment its digital delivery.

He explained that the firm’s rollout of its common data environment and BIM 360 approach in early 2020 saw Wessex quickly speed up processes to support remote working while collaborative design reviews continued apace.

This tech solution was, however, tailored to different stakeholders and employees via workshops, drop in sessions, and crucially the appointment of a number of “digital champions” to streamline the BIM rollout.

Rather than the “burdensome” role of a power-user or an administrator, however, these champions  were appointed to listen in “both directions” and channel communication between all layers of the company.

“We can’t listen to 500 teams having conversations on a daily basis, we need people out there with their digital hats on,” he explained.

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