Focused on moving forward

Yorkshire Water are seeking to develop visibility in the network.  This includes co-design of intelligent networks and assets – the broader initiative being managed by +ADD over the coming year seeks engagement from any supplier, research or innovator who can support development of:

• Visibility of what is happening in the waste water management network

• To better discern priorities and respond efficiently to actionable alerts

• Offers the ability to make automated decisions and learn

• Offers the potential to radically reduce pollution and predict internal flooding

… we have achieved a lot in just 12 months (See below)

What's the programme?

The programme's overall aim is to create visible waste water infrastructure.

This relates to several goals including reducing internal sewer flooding by 70% and reducing pollution incidents by 40%.

While the aim is simple, the change requirement and associated challenges are quite complex, interrelated and potentially require new ways of working.

These include selection of future proof telemetry, data management infrastructure and compatible sensors.

Further substantial changes to data management capability and analytics to accommodate data scaling and increase effective alarm management and actionable decision making.

We started with an IdeaLAB in December 2017 and this has been followed by a range of events including a hackathon and an innovation sprint on different aspects of the challenge over the coming  year. 

Our goal was to discover technology led and data driven opportunities to have a substantial impact on operational performance in predicting and avoiding pollution incidents, and reducing the level of internal flooding incidents.

What are the specific goals?

The programme has focussed on defining and validating collaborative business cases for combinations of telemetry and sensors providing optimal coverage, value for money and future proofing.  Our goal has been to develop a solution giving best coverage including small bore pipes which, notoriously don't have a suitable solution both operationally and economically.  This is a challenge due to the fact most failures occur in small bore environments.

The initiative will provide an opportunity for component vendors and those with both pre-market and existing solutions to work together to create new solution concepts.  The output will be business cases for investment in POC (Proof of Concept) systems, design and deliver and trial models.

We will be joined by experts and stakeholders from Yorkshire Water as well as a host of professionals in grant funding, supply chain innovation practitioners and other enablers to support development of different thinking and new form projects.

Key areas of focus include:

• Seeking to overcome challenges of offer versus needs (the demand for integrated solutions from multiple vendors).

• Creating an ideal mix of sensors providing actionable insight - we will be sharing the outputs of the recent alarm management hackathon.

• Understanding compatibilities of system hardware and software.

• Considering telemetry requirements for different types of sensors and use in different aspects of the network/ scenarios.

• Considering data governance, harmonisation and standards.

The programme to date

Engagement and key outputs to date

The programme has seen great engagement and the development of new market collaborations to solve water company needs.

Our work goes far beyond generating early stage ideas…

So far we have seen the conception of 4 new near to boundary sensors and a novel datahub, as well as a host of data management and analytics concepts.

Having reviewed the outcomes, +ADD are working with Yorkshire Water to develop a new tender (to be released in January 2019).

Further we are supporting pre-trial development and testing of new technology proposals to validate relevance to full tender engagement.

+ADD are supporting commercialisation, investment, establishing routes forward for the initiative participants. 

Yorkshire Water is committed to the initiative and is actively seeking to invest in resultant projects having set aside resources and budget to accelerate innovation and adoption of promising solutions.

Whats next?

It has become clear that the significant majority of waste water floods and events occur in secondary near to boundary infrastructure.

Yorkshire Water have made it clear that as a result of the programme they are open to mixed sensor and supplier solutions that significantly enhance whole network visibility and will not simply implement proven partial visibility solutions.

There will be a tender release in October / November 2018 with three Lots (sensor mix/ Telemetry and data management/ Analytics)

The +ADD team are now working with the selected consortia to validate pre-market technologies and their relevance to the upcoming tender.

This work includes consideration of technical feasibility, operationalisation impacts and commercials. Further we are supporting smaller initiative participants to engage and build collaborations, develop financials and consider practical market deployments.

The telemetry and sensor mix sprint was completed in June in collaboration with the Digital Catapult Centre Yorkshire in Bradford.  We have now finalised a shortlist of projects to progress to tender invitation and pretrial (where they are new developments).

For more information on the programme please contact peter@addstrategy.co.uk

Background to the challenge

While infrequent, Yorkshire Water understand that internal flooding can be one of the most unpleasant things you can experience in your home... 

Sewer flooding is the most unpleasant type of flooding, especially in the home.  There can be a number of causes. For example:

• The sewer is too full
• A blocked or collapsed sewer
• A pumping station failure

Tree roots may cause damage to sewers, and problems may also occur as a result of unsuitable items being put into the sewer, for example wipes, fats, cotton buds, sanitary items as well as builders’ rubble.

Flooding can also occur due to circumstances out of our control as a result of exceptional rainfall, rivers overflowing or internal plumbing issues.

One of the most common causes of operational problems and sewer flooding is a ‘soft blockage’. These blockages are caused by, for example, wipes being flushed down the toilet and cooking fat being poured down the sink. 

Reasons for pollution and internal flooding affecting customers