WWEM 2022 Sees United Utilities Win The Instrumentation Apprentice Competition And University Of Edinburgh Win The SWIG ECR Competition

This year’s Water, Wastewater & Environmental Monitoring Conference & Exhibition was a resounding success all around with hundreds of exhibitors visited by thousands of attendees over the two days of the event.

After a four-year break due to the 2020 event being cancelled due to the COVID pandemic, the competitions, which have become a mainstay of the event, also returned with six teams from a selection of the water & sewerage companies competing in the Instrumentation Apprentice Competition and a shortlisted three competitors in the Sensors for Water Interest Group Early Career Researcher Competition.

In this year’s Instrumentation Apprentice Competition, there were representatives from Anglian Water, Thames Water, Severn Trent Water, United Utilities, WRc, and Z-Tech Control Systems. The winners were Dan Alty and Alex Water from United Utilities, who received their trophies at the Gala Dinner from Oliver Grievson of WIPAC and Andy Godley of the WRC, who organise the competition. All the teams taking part received free membership of the Institute of Measurement and Control, and Dan and Alex will be able to receive advanced instrumentation training from the sponsors of the competition, which included ABB, Siemens, Badger Meter, Insitu, RS Hydro, Vega Control Systems, Siris Environmental, and Hach.

The Early Career Researcher Competition, which is organised by the Sensors for Water Interest Group at each WWEM conference and exhibition, saw competitors from the University of Bath, Exeter, and Edinburgh all competing for the £1200 prize.

Killian Gleeson, Thomas Homan, and Xinyi Wan all presented their posters based upon research that they have either recently completed or are currently undertaking. Xinyi Wan of the University of Edinburgh won the competition with her research on the simple detection of arsenic in drinking water using bioassays and mobile phone technology to gather the research results. The competition was particularly fierce this year with excellent poster presentations from Killian Gleeson, from the University of Sheffield, discussing linking water quality sensors in water distribution coming in second in the competition. Thomas Homan of the University of Bath came in third in the competition with his poster looking at water pollution sensing in chalk streams, which has a huge potential application with the current water quality monitoring of sewer overflows starting to happen in England & Wales in a few years’ time.

To round off this year’s Gala Dinner, there was a special award given to Oliver Grievson of Z-Tech Control Systems and Water Industry Process Automation & Control for his tireless contributions to the water industry. In awarding Oliver an “Outstanding Contribution to the Water Industry Award,” the host of WWEM, Marcus Pattison said:

“This is not a Lifetime Achievement Award as Oliver is far too young for that and he still has so much energy, drive, and enthusiasm for the water industry, which we hope to benefit from for many years to come. This award is for some of the achievements that he has been recognised for and for many more that have gone unrecognised or recorded!”