Timely advice for Three-Waters investment management

yearbook 2022 Timely advice for Three-Waters investment management

Replacing analogue with digital systems has already enabled companies to rise but now digitalisation offers more significant step changes

The water industry has changed radically in the past two decades. Water utilities’ duties to supply water and wastewater services have expanded into resilience planning, acting as conduits between all water users and the water environment, and adjusting to ever more demanding customer service expectations.

A new report by the Global Water Research Coalition, The Digital Water Utility of the Future, defines the many components of digitalisation and provides detailed descriptions of the opportunities and risks, enablers and barriers.

It suggests a four-step path towards digital maturity, moving from building a strong internal to a strong external focus, and identifies specific opportunities to optimise efficiencies within and between business units, enhance the interface with suppliers and customers, and leverage tighter integration with the community and external agencies.

Progress requires not just understanding and adopting new technological opportunities, but also transitioning leadership and workforce culture to embrace digital mentalities and ways of working, says co-author Dr Greg Ryan, Director of Business Excellence at the Water Services Association of Australia.

Data becomes a strategic asset

Unsurprisingly, technology is identified as a major enabler, and the report gathers input from the Coalition’s network to present a wide range of examples spanning the entire water utility business.

The report explains how digitalisation differs from traditional approaches, for example analysing data at the business level rather than by service function.

It describes how new technology and methods improve capacity to collate disparate data on infrastructure performance, environmental conditions,

customers, budgets and find meaningful patterns.

The report argues that new business value will come from sharing and using data, with information becoming a new strategic asset, allowing value creation beyond traditional infrastructure.

“In the field it is Smart Meters, closely followed by IoT devices looking at treatment and management of the water cycle.

“Within the businesses, it has been the move to enterprise-wide systems that link data from disparate sources to provide a single source of truth for the organisation,” says Dr Ryan.

“In addition, there is a keen focus on enhancing customer relationship management systems to better understand and tailor offerings to customers,”

Efficient business – deeper insights

Digitalisation has the power to completely transform water utilities’ business operations, from increasing data accuracy, collated in real time, to predictive analytics and data-driven AI decision support.

Digitalised monitoring and control devices, with computer systems that read and respond to monitored measurements, can automate routine processes and increase safety of asset inspections.

Self-learning algorithms can make programmes progressively more independent and less in need of operator input, possibly exceeding the capability of humans due to its consistent logic.

The move to enterprisewide systems referred to by Dr Ryan allows full integration of singlesource data that can be meaningfully interrogated and converted to information for decision making.

The report outlines how digital utilities integrate their business units, including asset management, business processes and customer service.

As more data is collated and analysed, digitalisation can streamline business systems using tools such as BIM. “In a capital-constrained,

post-Covid world, it is becoming increasingly important to become more efficient and deliver high quality customer service,” says Dr Ryan.

The prospects for businesses that are slow to adapt “will depend on many factors including the local political environment, the likelihood of private sector competition, along with economic and social pressures”. Marketplace’ to improve procurement of digital services.

Technology is developing rapidly and it is increasingly difficult to anticipate longer-term procurement needs. Utilities need to be agile, innovative, and well connected to pick up on, and harness the latest trends.

However, Ryan advises water managers not to be distracted by new technology. “The key is to focus on the business

problems being solved, then seek out digital solutions that are compatible with the current maturity of the organisation. It is no use installing the latest smart meters if the organisation lacks the ability to effectively gather, analyse and respond to the data they produce.”

The report describes how strategic partnerships can reduce the risks of stranded or obsolete IT infrastructure and warns against the temptation to focus on Operations and Maintenance.

The higher up the supply chain the procurement strategy is improved, the greater the benefits.

Digital security

Security breaches and the threat from hackers are valid concerns that act as a barrier to full digitalisation. The report presents a generic digital reference framework identifying key components such as individual ‘internet of things’ devices such as smart meters or sensors, through Bluetooth and WiFi, mobile apps and analytics, to industry-wide or smart city systems.

Security breaches can affect each component. The key to managing cybersecurity is understanding which level of the digital architecture is impacted, how to isolate it, and the extent to which it will affect different parts of the business.

The report outlines cyber-attacks including those aimed at core water utility operations. Hacked systems might enable malicious controls to cut off water supply, disrupt drinking water treatment processes, disrupt sewage pumping to flood houses and sewer overflows, or disrupt sewage treatment to release harmful environmental discharges.

Fortunately, there are approaches to help utilities improve their security and the authors present various existing protocols to improve cybersecurity at every digital touchpoint. Encryption is identified as one effective way to protect data and digital operations from cyber-attack.

The report outlines how digital utilities integrate their business units, including asset management, business processes and customer service

Procuring for Digital Water

The report discusses opportunities such as the UK Government’s ‘Digital Extracted from a Global Water Research Coalition report prepared by coalition partner the International Water Association

BUILDING FUTURE CITIES

Yearbook 2022

Working together to boost health and safety

Improvements in health and safety in-store and on-site are achievable on a nationwide scale when the right partnerships are forged.

Mitre 10 Health, Safety and Wellbeing Business Partner Nicky Primrose

Just ask Mitre 10 Health, Safety and Wellbeing Business Partner Nicky Primrose, who has led the charge for Mitre 10 in teaming up with Site Safe to help improve in-store safety and change attitudes towards health and safety.

With different types of stores across the country operating as Mitre 10, Mitre 10 MEGA or Hammer Hardware, as well as with off-site storage facilities, keeping on top of health and safety across the co-operative is no mean feat.

Mitre 10 considers Health & Safety to be everybody’s responsibility and commits significant time and resource to ensuring best practice in this area. The safety of team members, suppliers and customers is paramount at all times.

Tailored reviews

Each store is assessed (audited) once a year by an independent Site Safe auditor, who looks at a raft of safety features such as traffic management, sign-in processes, hazard registers, site inductions, emergency procedures, safe layout and storage of stock, and safe use of tools and equipment.

A great feature of the reviews, says Nicky, is that they can be tailored to hone in on specific focus areas which have been identified as either a high priority or a critical risk

“This gives us the ability to channel our energy into particular areas, so if we notice trends we can look at what actions the stores can implement to improve and we can check back in on this during the next round of reviews.”

Independent advice

Independent advice is a big part of what makes Site Safe health and safety reviews (audits) so invaluable, says Nicky.

“Because the Site Safe reviews are independent, there’s no bias, and our stores really take on board the advice. It also helps that Site Safe is a reputable brand in the industry.”

A coaching approach

Nicky says the Site Safe advisors have been great to work with, providing advice in a format that really allows their team members to understand how they can make changes and manage the issues.

“The advisors have been really good to deal with. They give a list of priorities that should be tackled right away and others that need to be done in the next couple of months – it’s really much more of a coaching approach.”

Significant improvements over time

In the six years the organisation has been working with Site Safe, there’s been a significant improvement in health and safety across the board, Nicky says.

“There’s been a huge improvement over the years, we track the results and although they may fluctuate slightly, stores now generally score in the 90 percent bracket. The scores have certainly increased from an average around the 70 percent mark when we first launched the Site Safe assessments.” And not only have processes improved, the attitudes of the team members has changed, too.

“Health and safety is definitely taken more seriously now – it used to be seen as more paperwork and box ticking and now that mindset is changing. Our team members are realising that if they get the behaviours right, the rest happens naturally.

It’s really switched from being compliance-focussed to a people-focussed approach,” she says

Simple, easy to use platform for viewing reports

Working with Site Safe at a national level has also given Mitre 10 the ability to keep track of the health and safety performance of all the stores in one easy-to-use online system and to monitor performance over time.

This is even simpler with the new ecoPortal platform introduced by Site Safe earlier this year.

“It’s great having all the reports in one place in the portal and if we want to look for a particular store it is easy to search and find it.”

“The layout is great, the photos and questions are easy to view, so it’s easy to read and to manage.”

Nicky also finds the benchmarking tool useful for stores to view their performance over time and see how they compare with other stores.

“The benchmarking is really good, it’s really useful for them to see how they’re tracking against previous results and each other because they are all really quite competitive!”

Results from the assessments are used to help decide the winners of Mitre 10’s annual store awards.

Strong working relationships

Nicky says one of the benefits of their relationship with Site Safe has been the ability to tailor the system to suit their needs - and they’re looking forward seeing more handy features being rolled out in the near future.

“Having that ability to work together to make the system really work for us has been vital and we are excited to keep working with Site Safe on this.”