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Utilities, as we’ve mentioned previously in our posts about digital transformation, face the unique challenge of having a highly dispersed and often aging infrastructure that comprises a diversity of moving and stationary parts. But there are clear opportunities to get better visibility and control using IoT, especially for these moving parts, including heavy field equipment and vehicles.

This is an issue that we’re excited to be addressing at Northumbrian Water's Innovation Festival on 14-17 September, sponsoring a design sprint that tackles this question: how could IoT give field technicians better, faster information about the availability, usage and location of mobile assets like diggers, lorries and other equipment?

Furthermore, field technicians work in a highly dynamic environment that can include hazards. Can IoT be used to deliver timely warnings about known unsafe operating conditions, especially when technicians are conducting repairs on urgent outages that must be fixed quickly?

Driving out paper and driving up efficiency

The scale of the challenge with a utility like Northumbrian Water is significant. It serves 1.3 million properties in Northeast England and provides over 1 billion litres of water a day, across a vast infrastructure that includes almost 400 pumping stations.

Already the technology deployed to manage its operation is immense, including SCADA systems that deliver reliable information about the operational side of the water network.

But while these accurately alert on incidents and outages, we believe SCADA data could usefully be enriched and enhanced if the physical infrastructure -– right down to a physical asset –- were more visible, using IoT sensors that could detect vibration, movement, pressure, temperature or other changes of condition. The same sensors could potentially be deployed on all mobile assets and equipment, which is the subject of this year’s Innovation Festival sprint. By connecting these physical assets with IoT, the utility could then develop new digital work methods that eliminate paperwork, logbooks and other manual processes around use and location of equipment.

Cranes, diggers, lorries, trucks, and other tooling needed to maintain the water pipeline includes heavy equipment whose location could be pinpointed using IoT, and the performance and utilisation of assets could also be monitored.

That means better, richer data that not only helps optimise efficiency, but also helps the organisation understand and justify its investment in field equipment. The potential for improved worker safety is also clear, as connected equipment and connected workers would make it possible to send and receive safety alerts -- including distress calls and real-time alerts on hazards.

Design thinking and focussed innovation

We’re delighted that despite the challenges of 2020 this year's Innovation Festival is going forward as a fully virtual event, allowing us to bring together solution partners in a condensed, four-day version of the typical festival timeline.

CKH IOD will be assembling a team of partners to collaborate on what will now be a four-day sprint, with a presentation to management on Day 4. As in previous years, we’ll be taking a design thinking approach, examining the entire challenge of mobile asset tracking, and looking at what kinds of information would be most beneficial to business and to technical stakeholders.

This is focused innovation, assembling our skilled partners around how to create a solution that advances both the business and the technology objectives of the customer. Rather than a process lasting months, a working model is ready within days for presentation to management, who can then take on board what's been achieved and assess whether to move forward with a fuller project.

Facilitating rapid time-to-value for utilities and IoT

Last year CKH IOD, actually took First Prize for a hack-a-thon showing how a data integration solution can minimise water supply interruptions. This year, although the festival will be virtual, we look forward to again doing what we do best: facilitating collaboration with the right partners, and helping explore new ways to get better, faster, richer information that drives down cost and improves efficiency.

Business problems, particularly for utilities, are always holistic rather than isolated. The Innovation Festival provides an excellent opportunity to look at problems in the round, mindful of the wider context and investment of the organisation.

For more information and to see the full line-up of the 2020 Northumbrian Water Innovation Festival, visit https://www.innovationfestival.org/the-festival/line-up-for-2020/sprints/ckh-iod/

The Covid crisis of 2020 has obviously changed daily life, but it's also changing companies' ideas about technology, and how more automation and more connectivity can help them stay productive during lockdown and social distancing.

Never before have consumers turned to the online channel for shopping as much as they do today. With retailers suddenly needing to cater for much heavier volumes online, it raises new questions about how successful a retail organisation is at delivering omni-channel customer service which is centered on the customer's need.

The utilities sector has long been a pioneer when it comes to technology adoption, but recent developments in network connectivity and sensors have opened up a whole new world of opportunities. At the Integrated Transport Electricity Gas Research Laboratory (InTEGReL) we are exploring all of these opportunities, and within this environment my team at Invisible Systems is working with Northern Gas Networks on the development of a low-cost universal data capture device linked to sensors monitoring a variety of conditions across multiple gas, water and electricity networks.

Our sensors are a core part of the work at InTEGReL. Dotted around the 15-acre InTEGReL site, they are monitoring a range of conditions from network pressure to environmental data, including temperature, humidity and CO2 levels. These sensors transmit that data in real time to our centralised dashboard. From there the team keep track of the various metrics and can quickly identify and react to changes. Additionally, if pre-determined data thresholds are breached, real-time alerts are triggered and notifications are sent via text, email or in some cases, voice calls.

Private networks, and increasingly 5G private networks, are the powerful backbone behind digital transformation in some of the world's largest industrial companies. With low latency, high availability and broad coverage, 5G is fuelling the move towards automation. It’s also helping these companies to embrace the new industrial revolution and implement advanced technologies on their very own networks, throughout their extensive campus environments.

The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) has created a magnitude of new connected devices and in turn, a magnitude of entry points waiting to be breached. An even bigger issue is that many IoT devices are easier to target than conventional devices, making them the new endpoint of choice for cybercriminals everywhere.

Companies know that the initial measures they implemented as a tactical response to the crisis of 2020 must now mature into something more sustainable. Many enterprises are now looking at how they can sustain working-from-home in the long-term and begin a phased reopening of offices and retail locations.

This article is also available in Italian / Questo articolo è disponibile in Italiano.

Businesses across the globe are pushing forward with digital transformation projects as organisations look to increase efficiencies, become more flexible and equip themselves to react quicker to change. From changing work practices and rolling out widescale remote working to introducing new products or services, companies are looking to SD WAN to drive these changes.

For most people, 30 years seems far away, but it feels like next week to those of us working to meet the UK government's 2050 target for Net-Zero carbon emissions. Both for myself at Northern Gas Networks and for my colleagues in other utilities, the Integrated Transport Electricity Gas Research Laboratory (InTEGReL) facility is an important aid as we look to accelerate the pathway to decarbonisation, not just for a single utility, but from a whole-system perspective.

In the ever-evolving business landscape the successful organisation is agile and has the know-how and capacity to adapt. Sectors ranging from Manufacturing, Ports, Airports to Energy are using technology to help them to react quicker to market conditions, competitive pressures and extraordinary global events. Richard Hart of CKHIOD highlights the way in which these verticals are embracing 5G private networks to drive through digital transformation.

Digital transformation doesn’t look the same in every organisation. For some, reimagining core elements of the business comes more easily, while in more traditional sectors, this level of change is profoundly uncomfortable.