Thames Water wins big at 2021 Water Industry Awards

Thames Water was the big winner at the coveted 2021 Water Industry Awards, which recognise the best and brightest projects and people the industry has to offer.

The company won the Water Efficiency Project of the Year award for developing an app that helps customers with above-average water use to reduce their consumption. The app was also named Overall Winner of the Year.

The panel of 20 judges, drawn from across the sector, including universities, consultancies, Ofwat and the Drinking Water Inspectorate, said: “This was an industry-leading project – an ambitious programme of work, and a game-changer in the sector in its use of smart data to drive household water savings on such a scale. 

“Using hourly data has multiple benefits to customers and the environment and reduces energy use and carbon too.”

Andrew Tucker, Thames Water’s water efficiency manager, said: “Our submission covered our smarter home visit programme, development of the sector’s first ever virtual water efficiency visit to adapt to Covid19 restrictions, new ‘WEE App’ software, and the use of smart meter data to target high usage households to maximise our water savings per visit.

“This work was a collaborative effort between our customer programmes (water efficiency and metering), and our partners Groundwork and Solo. I’m hugely proud of everyone involved. They’ve all worked hard to adapt to changes and challenges, saved a lot of water and helped customers through every step.”

Shortlisted in the Water Efficiency Project of the Year was Thames Water’s GreenRedeem scheme which gives customers on smart meters a reward every time they save water. 

Stantec, London Fire Brigade and Thames Water won the Health and Safety Initiative of the Year award for their work predicting flow capacity for fire-fighting.

The judges said: “The level of collaboration between the principal parties to deliver the Fire Flow System was impressive, and there is a huge potential for this system to be adopted across the UK water sector.”

Thames Water was also shortlisted in the following categories:

DATA ANALYTICS, CLOUD AND AI PROJECT OF THE YEAR
• Thames Water, Morrison Water Services and Hydraulic Analysis – Digital Twin Modelling: Artificial Intelligence to Tackle Leakage
• Thames Water, Morrison Water Services and Eurovia – Augmented Visualisation of Underground Services: X-Ray Utility Works to Make the Invisible Visible
• Thames Water - WHERE mobile application

MOST INNOVATIVE NEW TECHNOLOGY
• Thames Water, Morrison Water Services and Hydraulic Analysis – Digital Twin Modelling: Artificial Intelligence to Tackle Leakage

MOST INNOVATIVE USE OF AN EXISTING TECHNOLOGY
• Thames Water & University of Surrey – Dynamic Control Of Anaerobic Digestion For Flexible And Sustainable Electricity Generation

For the full list of winners and more details on the winning projects, visit utilityweek.co.uk/water-industry-awards-2021-winners-revealed/