Dee Valley Water has just signed a 3 year deal with digdat® to supply it with the digdat® Utilities service.

The service will provide a number of benefits to Dee Valley Water and its customers. Firstly, it will improve customer service by helping to keep supply interruptions from accidental third party strikes to the water network to a minimum. Secondly, it will improve street works health and safety by preventing personal harm from accidental hits to network strikes.

Finally, it will ensure that Dee Valley Water meets its legal obligation to provide easy access to accurate asset information and locations to anybody who needs it, including Local Authorities, other utility companies, developers, contractors and the general public.

The web-based asset data service digdat® Utilities has been created specifically for companies responsible for the management of infrastructure and assets. Providing 24/7 access, it shows the location and details of underground assets such as water, drainage and sewerage, electricity, telecommunications and energy (oil and gas) across the whole of Great Britain.

With one of the lowest levels of leakage in the industry and its customers receiving amongst the lowest bills in England and Wales, Dee Valley Water attributes their performance to the introduction of innovative working methods and techniques to better understand and manage its risks. 

Ian Plenderleith, Chief Executive of Dee Valley Water commented:

“Although we are the smallest of the water companies, we do not settle for small achievements!  We are proud of our successes to date, but we also continue to challenge ourselves to consider more innovative opportunities that help us to provide a better service to our customers." 

"The digdat® Utilities service will help us to deliver a better customer experience to everyone we provide a service to. From those people who need to know information on our assets because they want to excavate or carry out work safely without fear of damaging our assets or themselves; to our water consumers, both domestic and business, because it contributes towards our objective of providing a reliable supply and good customer service."

Dee Valley decided to launch the service in conjunction with the launch of its new corporate website, making the service directly accessible through the business section, making it easy and convenient for people to find and access the service in one place alongside other information about the business.  

Dee Valley Water Projects and Developer Services Manager, Josh Williams commented;

“During recent and ongoing consultations for web based improvements for Developer Services it came to light that a web based managed service may be a feasible option to the existing system benefiting customers as the web based information is easily and quickly accessed. "

"This is positive progression on our part to provide our customers with a better service to that currently offered and reflects comments recently made by the Regulator, that water companies should provide services to their developer customers and Self-Lay Organisations that are user friendly, transparent and easy to access."

Benefits of the new service include:

• A fully managed service based on our web solution and deliver free on-line access to approved statutory users (Local Authorities, Government bodies, utility companies and their agents)
• 24/7 access to the most up to date asset data for customers
• Adherence to statutory obligations for map provision
• Good reporting techniques and contract management which could indicate areas considered for planning which may assist DVW in predicting future growth

“There is increasing industry focus on driving up customer service performance whilst achieving operational efficiencies, all without compromising adherence to regulatory obligations. More and more asset owning businesses are seeing the benefits of using a service like digdat® Utilities to help them achieve this.” commented Kevin Brown, Director at digdat.