Queensland-based Unitywater is utilizing HCL Technologies’ Simplified Water Analytics Platform, SIWA to develop a data platform that stores and structures data to be used to gather insights. This data will be used to guide everything from managing unplanned outages to planning for preventative maintenance and expansion of infrastructure.
When you’re operating in one of Queensland’s fastest-growing regions and providing services to 16% of the state’s population, the pressure to perform well is constant.
When you’re also responsible for something as crucial as delivering everyday reliable and clean drinking water and sewerage services that are economically and environmentally sustainable, the pressure is even greater as disruptions have a knock-on effect for customers receiving an essential service.
Unitywater delivers these services to residents and businesses in Queensland’s Moreton Bay, Sunshine Coast and Noosa areas. Over the years, it has earned a reputation for reliable operations and strong levels of customer service.
Unitywater is working towards providing a pre-emptive and proactive customer service experience. They want things to work seamlessly behind the scenes, so residents and local businesses can get on with what’s important to them.
To help build a reliable, pre-emptive customer experience, Unitywater is employing digital technology. With the help of HCL and its Simplfied Water Analytics Solution, Unitywater is trialling the use of Big Data, combined with smart analytics, to see and act on network issues before they affect customers.
The power of data
As part of an on-going drive to put downward pressure on costs to keep prices low for its customers, Unitywater is increasingly making use of digital data. Drawn from a range of sources within the organization, this data will be used to guide everything from managing unplanned outages to planning for preventative maintenance and expansion of infrastructure for this growth corridor in south east Queensland.
To get as detailed a picture of operations as possible, data is being drawn from both Information Technology (IT) systems and Operational Technology (OT) systems. The IT systems include those which support customer service, billing, metering and work orders for field crews. The data from OT systems provides time series data from SCADA across a range of infrastructure including sewage pump stations, water reservoirs and sewage treatment plants.
“Increasingly, data from both our IT and OT sources is being combined to create an even more detailed view of our operations,” said Katherine Gee, Unitywater’s Executive Manager of Customer and Community. “This is needed to help guide future renewal and maintenance plans and ensure that our high-quality service levels are maintained at a reasonable cost, while ensuring reliability to our customers every day.”
The Simplified Water Analytics Platform, SIWA
To support this work, Unitywater has been working closely with technology partner HCL Technologies. The current project has involved the development of a data platform that stores and structures the data that will be used to gather insights.
HCL’s Simplified Water Analytics Platform, SIWA overlays the analytics and reporting layer that aims to achieve best in class outcomes and meet the specific needs of water utilities across Australia and New Zealand. This platform is designed to bridge the gap between Unitywater’s asset and customer data, leading to enhanced customer satisfaction, productivity and asset life through more informed and timely decision-making.
The platform makes use of data from multiple sources including the asset management system, GIS, digital meters, SCADA, IoT networks and Unitywater’s customer information and billing system.
When data is sourced from various systems on a real-time basis, this poses a new challenge of how to manage large volumes of data and not waste the insights available. It is imperative to leverage Big Data and cloud technologies.
“All data is fed into a data lake that was created during the platform’s deployment. This makes it easier for our people to access the data they need and use it in dynamic dashboards to better support their planning and decision-making activities” said Gee.
The new platform also has the capability in the future to deliver automated water balances, predict and better manage outages and identify areas where making cost savings is possible without affecting customer service levels.
Gee indicates that the newly deployed platform by HCL will assist the organization to better visualise data and make it available where it can best be used. The first use case that has been delivered into production is the storage and management of high volume smart meter data sourced from 10,000 digital meters installed as part of Unitywater’s ‘Digital Neighbourhood’ pilot program.
“The Simplified Water Analytics Platform is able to act as a command centre for capturing data and creating user-generated, customisable views,” she said.
Anurag Vijaywat, Sales Director – Energy and Utilities at HCL, said HCL is building the new platform in close collaboration with Unitywater. Throughout the project to date, both organizations have been living the core ethos of helping communities via sustainable processes, to create an efficient and reliable solution for the ecosystem and returning value to its stakeholders.
Unitywater will continue to work closely with HCL to seek to increase the capabilities of the new platform and drive additional value for Unitywater’s operations and customers.
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