An idea incubated by a team from Atkins and Thames Water looks set to save the utility firm millions of pounds in general maintenance and regulatory upgrade costs.

In just three months, a digital tool was developed which is now being used by Thames Water across London and the Thames Valley.

At any time, Thames Water engineers are working on hundreds of projects to serve their 15 million customers. However, coordinating and planning those projects is a huge challenge, so keeping teams informed and coordinated presents a real opportunity to make cost savings, reduce disruption and improve services.

Working with Thames Water’s Pressure Management, Mains Rehabilitation and Developer Services teams, Atkins developed a tool which pulls live data from multiple sources into one simple display, helping planners reduce disruption and costs, and ultimately avoid duplicated work.

Now, when a project is being planned, a quick look at the tool – which uses software designed to present spatial data visually - will map the locations of past, current and scheduled work programmes within Thames Water’s geographical network.

Sometimes work is brought forward; at other times, a project may be redesigned to take into account future development plans. Duplication of effort is reduced as a result of the collaboration.

For example, it became clear that the company’s plans to replace lead pipes could be revised and significantly reduced.

Guy Ledger, Atkins’ Business Development Director - Infrastructure, explained:

“We confirmed that lead pipes had already been replaced at 4,000 points between the main supply pipe and property boundaries within the network. This was quite a considerable overlap that allowed Thames Water to reduce the scope and re-plan the work.”

The innovative use of existing software can also facilitate better collaboration between Thames Water and other asset owners within its extensive service area.  Atkins and Thames Water are now exploring the idea of sharing live project data with Transport for London (TfL) to ensure smarter planning across the water company’s infrastructure development and maintenance work across London.

 Guy Ledger continued:

“This not only has the potential to reduce downtime in TfL’s transport network, which is better for travellers, it also means potentially lower rental charges against Thames Water for the period of time its work disrupts TfL’s service.”

“We never set out to create a digital tool for Thames Water - our focus was on a specific problem at a specific moment in time. I’d say technology facilitated the solution rather than shaped it.”