Thames Water has been using Wallingford Software’s network and database management solution InfoNet to help prioritize one of its major mains replacement programmes.
Thames Water Utilities is the UK’s largest water and wastewater services company with over 5,000 employees providing service round the clock to 13 million customers across London and the Southeast of England. It is the largest UK water company, with 31,100km of water mains and 68,000km of sewers, 99 water treatment works and 349 sewage treatment works, including the UK’s largest at Beckton, East London.
Thames Water has one of the world’s most ambitious mains replacement programmes - so far it has replaced over 800 miles of old and leaky water mains in London, enough to stretch from the capital to Aberdeen. Work is now accelerating, and by 2010 the company will have renewed over 1100 miles of water mains.
The utility has two major projects underway concurrently: the first is the Victorian Mains Replacement programme, which is mainly located in metropolitan London and aims to replace the areas of the network that are most prone to leaks.
Twinned with this is a second tranche of work known as the Capital Distribution Mains Replacement programme, which focuses on Thames Water’s network outside the capital, a vast area that includes a number of major towns and extends into Oxfordshire. It is here that InfoNet is being used to target areas for renewal.
The solution was implemented around a year ago by lead Thames Water design engineer Tony Broadley who knew the solution well, and recognised its suitability for the task the utility had in mind. Engineer Tom Nicholson explains: ‘Last year, 29km of mains replacement was designed in house. We have both design and operational engineers, and the design engineers were simply asking the operational engineers which mains burst most frequently.
‘It was felt we needed a more quantitative and auditable approach, and as we were ramping up from 29km to 100km a year we needed a way to meet our targets - some sort of system that would make it easier; a better approach.’
He adds that InfoNet ‘is an excellent piece of software, and the project has only scratched the surface of it so far’.
In the initial stage, mains location and known burst information was transferred from Thames Water’s corporate GIS system to InfoNet during a massive 12GB data import. Information on the entire potable water network’s trunk and distribution mains is now stored on the solution, as it was easier to import everything than pick out project-related mains.
Other data from the customer services department’s job management system (JMS) is also imported on an ongoing basis - this database of complaints is sieved for burst-related calls, for which information is then tagged to the relevant mains in the GIS. ‘When looked at in InfoNet, you can see the network and on top of that all of the bursts and customer complaints,’ explains Mr Nicholson.
The customer complaint database is not linked ‘live’ to InfoNet, (though this is possible) but a data refresh is undertaken at regular intervals so that information can be added. In addition, as the operational teams work on bursts, the JMS system is updated with a record of what has been discovered during the project. This is then fed back in due course to InfoNet.
The data import was ‘pretty quick’ Mr Nicholson says, and the solution was customised to accept Thames’s data format. ‘When you are building a database, integration is always a problem,’ he notes. But the careful preparatory work meant that the import was straightforward.
The solution allows a bird’s eye view of the network, he adds. “You can swoop over it. We have tagged the bursts to the network - the mains are automatically ‘themed’ (colour coded) in red,orange, yellow or green according to the number of bursts, with red indicating the greatest number of bursts and green the least. It is very good - just by viewing a DMA (district metered area) or zone it gives a very quick identification of sections of mains that burst.”
Once this overview has been undertaken and an area of interest selected, it is possible to look at the properties for each main and assign it to a project. The company has regulatory criteria for choosing mains to replace, but expands project areas as far as it can so that schemes are as efficient as possible.
Network data is held on sections of main from 0.5m to hundreds of metres in length, depending on how the information was captured. This means InfoNet is able to provide information for the shorter sections rather than for a whole main, but given InfoNet’s facility to analyze the entire network it is possible to select areas where the largest concentrations of high-burst mains are located and gather them into suitable project packages.
This ability has made a huge difference to the amount of work being undertaken, says Mr Nicholson. “A few years ago we were repairing 14km a year, but we are on target to replace 100km this year. It has enabled us to ramp up from previous years and has allowed us to expand the project, which is excellent. One person can do the targeting and identifying projects. InfoNet allows us to do the majority of the targeting.”
One aspect of InfoNet that has proved very useful to Thames is its excellent version control. “Every change to the network is recorded, so we can make sure the JMS has not reported the same burst twice. InfoNet records where information has been deleted or added. The version control is imperative for our companies auditing procedures.”
Some half-dozen projects are being undertaken this year, but if an inquiry is made some years from now it will still be possible to follow the data trail back and check the data..
The solution also allows the utility to keep track of its previous work, Mr Nicholson explains. “One thing we did when we started was to put the old projects on the system so we could see which mains have been repaired before. With the Victorian Mains Replacement scheme, when pipes are replaced we will incorporate this data into InfoNet so that we don’t target them or other work done by operatives. It allows us to keep an eye on what is being done across the network.”
Thames Water is also keen to minimise disruption to its customers, one of its primary objectives, and InfoNet enables it to make the decision to either go in once or, if a great deal of work has been undertaken in a particular area before, to leave the work until a bundle of mains replacements can be programmed in for the future. These decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, taking into consideration the needs of customers and other stakeholders.