Commercial Leakage Logging Project for major water company
During the summer of 2006 Ashridge Engineering was invited to a Value Planning Workshop to examine value improvements associated with a Commercial Leakage Logging Pilot Project for a large water company.
The objective of this pilot project was to increase leakage flow logger coverage on commercial properties to improve legitimate allowance estimates to support effective targeting of Mains Renewal and Active Leakage activities. The data would similarly support targeting leakage on high volume users.
The project was targeted with the purchase of both permanent telemetry flow loggers and temporary manual download flow loggers to capture data for up to 45,000 sites. This data would improve the statistical sample in the client software, and daily telemetry flow data into the primary analysis and modelling software tool. A desktop data cleanse process to review the CIS quality of information on the top 20,000 customers was to be delivered in parallel with the above fieldwork activity.
It was thought that the permanent telemetry loggers would be installed at sites typically using greater than 5,000m3/annum and/or illustrating significant variation in usage patterns. It was recognised that a proportion of the existing commercial revenue meters were likely to be unsuitable for logging and the programme would replace these meters to enable logger installation.
The purpose of the Value Planning workshop was defined as follows
- Provide an understanding to the participants of the elements of the Programme
- Discuss the key challenges associated with delivering the Programme
- Review the current procedures
- Understand how delivery efficiency could be improved
- Achieve buy in from stakeholders
- Identify any further actions
As a result of the workshop and the outputs from it Ashridge Engineering in concert with other equipment suppliers, contractors, water company managers and consultants was asked to provide equipment for this major project.
Since the quantities of equipment required in the timescales required by the customer was extremely challenging, AE dedicated a small team of senior managers within the company. They were tasked with delivering the Textlog product on time within budget without compromising the reliability that had become the touchstone of AE’s success. In addition to AE staff, discussions were held with key sub-contractors, component and material suppliers with a view to getting them to buy into the tight timescales involved.
As a result, an aggressive schedule was put forward to the water company and their contractors and advisors. AE were awarded contracts to supply 3500 Textlog data loggers for connection to commercial meters in the capital and managed to deliver the units in an elapsed period of 6 months.
Since then the fleet of AE loggers has been supplying 15 minute demand data delivered daily by SMS to the water company data centre. Although we are unable to say how much water has saved as a result of the deployment and continued use of the AE Textlog, it runs into a significant number of megalitres per day. In addition, the quality of data being used to target mains rehabilitation work has been improved immeasurably.
