Software package and information systems

Tender description

This procurement followed the Innovation Partnership procedure and sought innovative businesses to help UU tackle key industry challenges in innovative ways. The top applicants won places in UU's Innovation Lab. The Lab is a 10-week programme and participants will co-locate and work with UU to develop, improve, test and demonstrate their idea, potentially in live environments. A supply arrangement may follow. Those who met the published selection criteria were invited to put forward ideas in the 5 categories, each a separate lot as described below. A single idea was only able to be submitted only for a single lot. For more detail see www.unitedutilities.com/innovation Our day to day lives and homes will become more connected, and we’re constantly collecting and sharing information that can make us more efficient. How can Internet of Things (IoT) in the home in the form of smart meters, IoT appliances, and sensors work together to ensure we catch water issues before they become a burden to the customer? and, of equal importance, how can we use these tools to find new ways of managing water and help customers manage their water spend better? United Utilities want to be more efficient so they can do more for their customers, for less. How can new technology, particularly predictive or monitoring solutions that can be applied to our water and wastewater networks, enable United Utilities to pre-emptively fix issues before a customer notices or complains - and give their customers a positive experience by informing them of this preventative action? What technologies have the potential to help the customer save money, reduce local flooding or protect the environment via enabling self-control of their water usage or wastewater disposal? United Utilities has over 5,000 employees working in the business and much more in their supply chain - undertaking tasks such as asset repair, maintenance, visiting customers and moving from job to job. Many of these are lone workers, working remotely from the central team. United Utilities has recently introduced mobile devices to many of their employees and these could be enabled with new technologies or solutions to help with coordination and performance. How can United Utilities better collect, learn from and distribute knowledge? Help ensure the safety of team members in the field? or, maximise time on jobs by prioritising workloads in real-time? Solutions here could come from many fields, including wearable technology, connected transport or tools distributed via mobile devices. Every day United Utilities carries out reactive maintenance which could have been avoided if the team were able to better assess and predict the condition of the asset and works required. What can predictive tools pull together data sources (temperature, acoustics and pressure), network knowledge, traits of certain geographies, materials, water hardness to detect when bursts are going to happen and where? Tools like VR, IoT, and sensors could all be employed to help United Utilities serve the network proactively. Automation and environmental considerations are increasingly taking a front-seat in water operations. How can United Utilities stay ahead of this curve and work with future technologies in the energy, AI, robotics space to maintain the highest levels of customer service and reduce costs via greater automation and reduce energy consumption at the same time?