Leakage Intelligence Decision Support: LIDS

Water supply companies are under increasing pressure to reduce leakage in their networks whilestill providing good value to their customers. The roadmap to sustainable leakage reduction is defined by complex interactions between a wide range of operational and capital interventions.

A successful leakage management strategy needs to consider financial constraints, asset and operational performance, regulatory requirements and available innovation options. The optimal approach must blend the individual and combined benefit of all possible interventions, as well as reflecting their relevance to local performance and asset conditions.

Business Modelling Associates (BMA) are working with Water Utilities to deliver a data-driven,holistic solution to analyse, visualise and optimise their end-to-end leakage management processes. Our solution is driving sustainable improvement in leakage performance, whilst providing a powerful link between operational management, long-term capital investment and innovation.

Context

With ever increasing environmental pressure, including rising temperatures, increased water scarcity and mindfulness around waste-reducing value chains,the focus on reducing leakage and non-revenue water has never been greater.For example, the UK Water Services Regulator (OFWAT) requires the UK Water Sector to reduce leakage levels by an average of 16% over the next 5 years(April 2020 to April 2025). Many companies have gone further, committing to a 50% reduction in leakage by 2050.

These requirements, combined with the need for companies to both deliver water at a fair cost to their customers and value to their shareholders, is an extremely challenging task. To rise to this challenge water companies must ensure the alignment and optimisation of their leakage operations, capital investment and targeted innovation spend, reflecting a complex backdrop of regulatory, financial and organisational constraints.

Solution Approach

LIDS is a single solution which aligns and optimises capital and operational leakage management activities over a 5-year+ period. The solution:

• ensures capital programmes, operational resourcing and operational performance management are coordinated in an optimal way; and
• provides enhanced assurance of future leakage performance, ensuring the relationship between in-year performance and multi-year targets is reflected in the optimal intervention plan.

Robust and rapid quantification of the benefit of innovation ensures that the Innovation strategy is both targeted and aligned to current and future performance, operational needs and the overall leakage strategy.

At the heart of the solution is a detailed leakage management model which represents a wide range of mechanisms - both conventional and innovative - by which operational activities and capital schemes will contribute to leakage reduction.

“The Leakage Intelligence Decision Support (LIDS) solution is a real step forward, enabling a truly whole systems approach to leakage management decisions to be taken with confidence.”

Paul Taylor

Leakage Assurance Management, Severn Trent Water

Solution

Business Modelling Associates (BMA) have developed a data-driven, holistic solution to analyse, visualize and optimise end-to-end leakage management processes and drive sustainable improvement in leakage performance. This value chain representation encompasses within-year operational performance management, recognised capital solutions of known leakage benefit and the deployment of more innovative solutions. The solution provides a key link between operational management, the long-term capital programme and new innovation.

Solution users:

• Leakage Strategy Managers
• Leakage Innovation
• Leakage Operations Managers
• Leakage Area Managers and Technicians

Benefits

• The ability to forecast Leakage Performance and assure delivery against Leakage Strategy: will the strategy deliver the necessary Leakage reduction?
• Clear visibility and understanding of longer-term leakage performance.
• Flexibility to rapidly re-define the current leakage plan ‘on-the-fly’ through an improving understanding of the costs, benefits and interdependencies of all interventions and innovation.
• Support appropriate operational performance target setting and more targeted interventions which truly reflect the best leakage reduction opportunities; stop chasing shadows!
• Integration of operational and capital leakage activities and planning, based on a common and representative set of assumptions. Identification of synergies and conflicts between intervention options, fully reflected in rapid business case assessment and decision making.
• The ability to refine and target the interventions made by a water company, deriving maximum benefit from the identified measures in a reduced deployment time, delivering faster and greater returns on investment.
• Highly flexible ‘what-if’ scenario specifications to inform and prioritise innovation trials.

BMA believes in representing complex problems within a wider system context. This is the best way to capture and embrace the complexity required to deliver effective and value adding decision support when interacting with complex systems. By using our Advanced Digital Business Twin framework, we bring in the key components of value chains to assist in determining the best solutions for our clients.

By considering the complete operating environment - from physical assets and infrastructure to abstract business constraints and rules - we bring a complete representation and consideration of complex business systems.