The Digital Opportunity of the UK Water Industry

The United Kingdom (UK) ranks consistently among the most technologically advanced nations on Earth, boasting engineering marvels like the London Crossrail and one of the world’s best telecommunications networks. But the country lags behind in one key measure: water infrastructure. The pipes, mains, gauges, and pumps that make up Britain’s water industry date back largely to the 19th century. The last time the system was cutting edge, Jack the Ripper stalked the streets of London’s East End.  

For customers, this aging infrastructure is invisible but assumed—virtually all Britons enjoy access to clean water. But for the organizations charged with delivering that universal access, the effective control and governance of these assets is increasingly challenging. There are global mega trends impacting the industry that include rising costs, water supply sustainability, revenue reduction, aging infrastructure, increases in global flood events, and the adoption and replacement of technology.

Addressing the "platform problem"

Nevertheless, the people who work within these organizations are certainly up for the challenge.  Having worked alongside many of the engineers and experts in the UK’s water industry, I have little doubt that dedicated people are on the job and motivated to achieve excellence. The organizational objectives of most water utilities are built around customer satisfaction measures. These organizations don’t have a people problem—these are some of the most knowledgeable people in the world. Neither do they have a process problem—they are built around balancing risk, cost, and performance of assets. The key challenge that remains is the platform problem. Experts are forced to manage with a number of disconnected applications, spending a significant portion of their time gathering data from disparate sources and out-dated technology. It is the equivalent of sending highly trained, motivated, and experienced soldiers out to battle with muskets and horses.

Implementing industrial applications

In an otherwise highly developed nation, there are still some big opportunities for technological advancement in the water utility sector. Excitingly, these are beginning to materialize as water companies look to leverage their existing IT systems (automation, GIS, AIP, EAM) and other applications to bring Britain’s water industry into the new digital century. These organizations look to establish a line of sight by aligning all of the relevant business processes in an end-to-end fashion. The only things many of them are missing are the applications and technology that are built to enable this integrated business processes approach. Solutions like Predix Asset Performance Management ( Predix APM) and Predix ServiceMax from GE Digital have already helped utilities and the electricity market in the UK, and around the world, to realize new value by streamlining service delivery and the maintenance of infrastructure while reducing costs and staying at or below an acceptable level of residual risk. Increasingly, water companies in the UK are also recognizing, like these other industries, that these tools can enable intelligent asset strategies to help expose where they are over-investing or under-investing in assets.  

Through the use of sensor networks and APM applications, utilities can monitor the health of assets in real time—even those that are more than a century old. That telemetry can then be used to turn manual processes into automated ones, improving response times, mitigating and minimizing the need for human interventions and, crucially, providing the requisite data to drive more informed business decisions.

The challenge is great

The most significant consequence to a lack of digitization is the enormous gap it creates between assets and business processes. Without a digital platform to weave together physical infrastructure and the business processes governing the management of assets, operators are at a significant disadvantage. Their ability to safely and efficiently deliver services to their customers, at the lowest sustainable cost, depends on the amount of time engineers and finance directors can put their heads together. In their current state, there isn’t enough visibility and access to the right information for them to do that.  This makes it difficult to spend money so that it will do the most good.

Predix ServiceMax optimizes work planning and scheduling for maintenance that requires human intervention, ensuring that when technicians are dispatched, they’re able to resolve issues as quickly and efficiently as possible. The solution integrates with Predix APM, providing workers with the data they need to perform the right task, at the right time, more effectively.

Together, these GE Digital industrial applications offer the promise of a connected, digital future for an industry that has served Britons for generations. By optimizing their existing technology with asset and customer centric solutions like Predix APM and Predix ServiceMax, water companies are ensuring the delivery of world-class service for generations to come.