Scottish Water1
Authors: Deborah Gee, Travis Poole, Graeme Blair Scottish Water
Congress Subtheme: Grounding water management in sound science
Scottish Water is a Government owned corporation providing a vital service to Scottish Society. That is, the provision of clean safe drinking water to every home and business across Scotland as well as the disposal of resulting wastewater in a manner that protects the environment. To meet the challenges of the corporate vision to be "Scotland's most valued and trusted business" the company needs to satisfy its base obligations, improve services and reduce costs.
The Asset Management directorate within Scottish Water is responsible for the upkeep (repair, refurbishment and replacement) of over 97,000km of water and sewer pipes, 297 water treatment works and 1,837 waste water treatment works. Historically, Asset Management focused its efforts on short-term planning. Plans covered at most the next 5 years; however, it aimed to develop long-term asset strategies that take into account forecast needs as well as current issues. This requires a mature understanding of asset reliability, capability and risk. It also requires complex optimisation of asset investment to ensure that the minimum amount of money is spent on the right assets at the right time to maintain or improve service.
In 2010 Scottish Water, Edinburgh University and Strathclyde University collaborated successfully to develop statistical and mathematical tools providing the evidence for over £1bn worth of capital maintenance investment. The Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) program was carried out over 2 years and involved the dedication of representatives from all three partners to develop novel approaches and embed the outputs into Scottish Water's Asset Management decision making process. Currently short listed for 'The Best of the Best UK KTP' award, the experiences, lessons learnt and long term benefits from this project are invaluable. We will discuss what is involved in a KTP, the context of the project, the make-up of the KTP team and what we believe contributed to the project's success.