Seven Trent Leakage Decision Support Tool Solution: LIDS

The optimal roadmap to sustainable leakage reduction is defined by complex interactions between financial constraints, operational limitations, regulatory requirements and innovation. The approach requires the right balance of traditional operational and capital investments with new innovative technologies or interventions, with the blend of interventions reflecting local conditions and circumstances.

Context

With ever increasing environmental pressure, including rising temperatures, increased water scarcity and mindfulness around waste-reducing value chains, 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 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 a challenging task. Water utilities need to structure their leakage mitigation activities against the complex backdrop of regulatory, financial and organisational constraints.

Challenge

To meet leakage Performance Commitments, many water companies have devised complex capital investment programmes which will be delivered during the current 5-year regulatory period (AMP7). This is aligned to the on-going weekly operational management of Active Leakage Control (ALC) and ongoing innovation trials which consider novel mitigation approaches.

However, viewing these streams of activity in isolation provides no visibility of their interdependencies. This risks obscuring potential synergies or conflicts that might exist in mitigation strategies. When considering the business cases for candidate technologies or strategies, it is crucial to understand how these activities interact within the pre-existing strategy, operations and infrastructure. This is not possible if each investment or intervention is considered in isolation, often limited to spreadsheet-based analysis.

In many cases the conditions under which optimal value can be delivered by a candidate investment or innovation may point to necessary operational changes to facilitate or enhance its efficacy or they may only be relevant to operational areas with unique characteristics. Recognising increasing financial constraints through AMP7, companies require assurance that decision-making around leakage is both consistent and complementary at all levels of the organization and that they are getting maximum value from every intervention.

“BMA are a fantastic business partner; they have understood our needs and data to tailor their approach and deliver outstanding results. 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. Key to the success of this project was BMA’s collaborative and engaging approach underpinned by leading edge systems modelling technology.”

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 ALC performance management, recognised capital investment which is known to reduce leakage and the deployment of more innovative solutions. The solution provides a key link between operational management, the long-term capital programme and new innovation

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. Intervention impacts can be specified at the level of:

• Key components of leakage: background, trunk main, base, NRRd, NRRc
• Leak life: awareness, find, fix periods
• Operational metrics:  leak type & numbers, person hours per repair

The core solution representing the current AMP7 plan provides the baseline from which a broad range of scenarios can be run, including optioneering associated with capital investment, innovation rollouts, operational efficiency targeting and extreme weather events.

Benefits

• The ability to forecast Leakage Performance and assure the in-Amp Leakage Strategy: will the strategy delivery the necessary Leakage reduction?
• Clear visibility and understanding of longer-term leakage performance, beyond the end of AMP7.
• Flexibility to rapidly re-define the AMP7 leakage plan ‘on-the-fly’ through an improving understanding of the costs, benefits and interdependencies of all interventions and new 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 and data.
• Identification of synergies and conflicts between intervention options, fully reflected in rapid business case assessment and decision making.
• Reduced deployment time, faster and greater returns on investment.
• Highly flexible ‘what-if’ scenario specifications to inform and prioritise innovation trials.