Anglian Water is looking to use AI to forecast and efficiently deliver crucial large-scale water infrastructure projects.
The move covers projects and project portfolios under water regulator Ofwat’s upcoming AMP8 investment window, which will run from 2025 until 2030, and sets out a record £88bn of upgrades to improve water infrastructure.
Ofwat’s recommendation of this record public investment to 16 water companies is a response to public discontent at the state of Britain’s waterways, with calls to tackle storm overflows. It’s not just about environmental protection, but also about securing water supplies, and ensuring high standards for consumers.
Ofwat has charged water companies with ensuring the unprecedented sums they will be given are employed efficiently, and do not lead to greater waste than in previous asset management periods.
Announcing the £88bn investment proposals earlier this years, David Black, Ofwat’s chief executive, said: “Customers want to see radical change in the way water companies care for the environment.
“Our draft decisions on company plans approve a tripling of investment to make sustained improvement to customer service and the environment at a fair price for customers.
“These proposals aim to deliver a 44% reduction in spills from storm overflows compared to levels in 2021. We expect all companies to embrace innovation and go further and faster to reduce spills wherever possible.
“[This] announcement also increases the resilience of our water supplies to the impact of climate change, and will reduce how much water is taken from rivers by enabling a range of long-term water supply projects, which includes plans for nine reservoirs.
“Let me be very clear to water companies. We will be closely scrutinising the delivery of their plans and will hold them to account to deliver real improvements to the environment and for customers and on their investment programmes.”
Water resilience
With this in mind, Anglian Water has partnered with UK technology company, nPLan as a key part of its strategy to ensure it makes the best use of investment, and hold up to Ofwat’s scrutiny, wile delivering value for taxpayers and consumers.
Euan Black, head of delivery portfolio management at Anglian Water, said: “During the AMP8 regulatory period, UK water companies are set to invest nearly 90% more in water resilience and supply projects than during AMP7. With such a significant expansion in investment and ambition, the challenge for companies like Anglian Water is ensuring we can scale our delivery capabilities to match.
“nPlan is a critical part of our strategy to ensure predictable delivery and provide effective oversight across our entire investment programme. By leveraging AI and historical data, we can make smarter, data-driven decisions and provide live reports to more than 300 stakeholders across the business, ensuring transparency and accountability.
“More importantly, this partnership will deliver direct benefits to our customers. With nPlan, we can better plan and coordinate work schedules, reducing disruptions caused by construction activities such as road closures. This not only cuts down delivery costs but also minimises inconvenience to the public, ultimately allowing us to provide a smoother, more efficient service.”
nPlan’s software utilises predictive AI, and is claimed to have the world’s biggest library of past project plans (over 750,000 and counting, the company says). This data is used to forecast the likely duration of construction activities, understand when key milestones are likely to be reached, and highlight the activities most likely to drive delay – to far greater accuracy and speed than human analysts can achieve.
Portfolio focus
Crucially, nPlan says, these capabilities can also be ‘rolled up’ and applied across portfolios of projects, enabling users of its portfolio-focused product, nPlan Portfolio to quantify the ‘deliverability’ of a portfolio, identify problem projects and systemic risks to delivery, and make smart decisions about how resources are allocated.
The agreement builds on a successful initial engagement in which Anglian Water used nPlan to assure and de-risk the delivery of more than 200 projects within its AMP7 portfolio.
During that engagement, Anglian Water representatives are said to have been particularly impressed with the way nPlan Portfolio allowed them to increase the effectiveness of portfolio boards (crucial review meetings), and assess the deliverability of schedules presented by contractors so that they could provide precise and constructive feedback that improved the outcome of each project.
Anglian Water now plans to use nPlan’s technology to assure and manage as many as 1,400 projects during AMP8.
Dev Amratia, chief executive of nPlan, said: “With this partnership, Anglian Water is positioned to become a best-in-class performer: by leveraging insights from across the global water industry, its project teams can seamlessly apply lessons learned from past projects, reducing risk, improving efficiency, and delivering better outcomes for customers.
“Our agreement with Anglian Water is another milestone for nPlan, an important validation of our portfolio management product, and reflects our commercial momentum, which has been increasing through 2024.”
Image credit: somsak nitimongkolchai/Shutterstock
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