UK's Largest Water Utility Implements Innovyze Smart Asset Management Solutions

Thames Water Selects InfoNet and InfoNet Mobile to Support Capital Delivery Program

Innovyze, a leading global innovator of business analytics software and technologies for smart wet infrastructure,  recently announced that Thames Water, UK, has adopted InfoNet and InfoNet Mobile as the core components of its work with contractors as part of its capital delivery program.

Thames Water is the United Kingdom’s largest wastewater services provider, with 66,500 miles of sewer, 2,530 pumping stations, 1.2 million manholes, and 350 sewage works providing services to 14 million wastewater customers in and around London. As part of a major project, Thames Water has earmarked approximately 1,027 km of sewers to be surveyed and cleansed, mainly, by contractors Optimise and MGJV. The project is divided into 16 Sewer Drainage Area Catchments (SDAC). InfoNet and InfoNet Mobile will be used to manage all work orders and collect and evaluate data for the undertaking.

InfoNet, a purpose-designed asset and data integrity management and capital planning solution for water distribution, wastewater collection and stormwater networks, enables fast, effective integration of a wide range of applications and datasets, including generic GIS, corporate databases and field data systems. Its sophisticated query engine and rich results presentation and reporting make it the asset performance modeling tool of choice for utilities worldwide. The software allows users to analyze all aspects of the network life cycle and keep assets performing at peak condition while making the most of limited budgets. It ensures well-informed, swift, cost-effective and action-oriented decision making for both day-to-day operational management and long-term network planning. InfoNet Mobile provides users with a complete field management solution for collecting data and transferring it seamlessly to the office environment.

“Using InfoNet we can quickly and efficiently manage the data collection and analysis process,” explains Chris Hinton, Waste Network Performance Analysis Manager at Thames Water. “It also allows more flexible data collection requirements, such as including the location of interceptors. The greatest advantage is that at the end of the process, the contractor is able to return the data to us, fully validated in InfoNet — giving us more confidence in the quality of the information.”

As part of this project the two contractors have been charged not only with surveying known mainline sewers, but mapping and surveying uncharted network, including recently adopted private drains. These assets became the responsibility of the Welsh and English water utilities in 2011 following legislative changes made in Section 98 of the Water Act 2003.

“The additional task of collecting information on uncharted assets massively increases the complexity of the project,” notes David Eales, SDAC Contract Manager at Optimise. “Using InfoNet and InfoNet Mobile as a single integrated digital solution has allowed us to adopt a streamlined approach to tracking the work to ensure it is completed on time and within budget.”

Upon receiving data for each SDAC area, contractors use InfoNet to schedule CCTV Survey jobs for individual crews and synchronize this schedule with field laptops. As they record the progress of CCTV surveys, site crews are also recording the location of uncharted assets and verifying the location of existing assets. All data collected is recorded in customized digital forms with drop-down choice lists to confine entry options. Digital mapping allows the work packages to be displayed on each field device, showing complete and incomplete jobs, the location of existing assets, and background map layers. In addition, a convenient calendar format schedule is available to crews and fully integrated with the mapping.

“Once a crew has completed all their jobs, they only have to synchronize their laptops with our office server to make all the data they have collected in InfoNet Mobile instantly available in InfoNet,” says Peter Nolder, SDAC Data Manager at MGJV. “The advanced tools in InfoNet enable us to quickly assess the connectivity and validity of the field data. This ensures that this data is validated to a high standard before it is passed back to Thames Water.”

“Water utilities are looking to amass increasingly accurate information on their networks, not only to fulfil their legislative requirements, but to run their networks in a cost-effective manner for the benefit of their customers,” said Andrew Brown, Innovyze Director of International Operations. “With their ease of implementation and use, broad functionality and powerful analytics, Innovyze comprehensive smart asset management solutions allow utilities to confidently set a high standard in meeting these goals.”

About Innovyze
Innovyze is a leading global provider of wet infrastructure business analytics software solutions designed to meet the technological needs of water and wastewater utilities, government industries, and engineering organizations worldwide. Its clients include the majority of the largest UK, Australasia and North American cities, foremost utilities on all five continents, and ENR top-rated design firms. With unparalleled expertise and offices in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, the Innovyze connected portfolio of best-in-class product lines empowers thousands of engineers to competitively plan, manage, design, protect, operate and sustain highly efficient and reliable infrastructure systems, and provides an enduring platform for customer success. For more information, visit www.innovyze.com.