Universal access point for water (UAP4W)

Universal access point for water (UAP4W)

Amount awarded: £224,010

Led by: SES Water

Partners: Northumbrian Water Limited, Southern Water Services Ltd, United Utilities Group Plc, Thames Water Utilities, Water Research Centre Limited, The University of Sheffield, Fluid Consulting Limited

Project completed: May 2023 

Water companies in England and Wales have a challenging target to halve water leakage by 2050. To achieve this, they need an accurate understanding of the condition of the water mains and be able to carry out inspections and repairs without the need for expensive and disruptive excavations. The objective of this project was to design a universal access point for water, which would provide a standardised entry point to pressurised water pipes for inserting cameras, leak location arrays, repair solutions, autonomous robotic solutions, and a host of other devices. 

The project plan was built specifically around Industry participation, with those engaging with us through workshops collectively defining the specification against which the Universal Access Point (UAP) would be designed, and subsequently selecting the preferred design or design features leading to the final design. The twin roles of the Project Delivery Team were to facilitate that process, and to solve the many challenges they made. 

In detail, the project was structured to: 

1. To perform a search of standards, procedures and existing solutions, and then to fully define the problem and produce a Draft Design Specification following industry consultation 
2. To perform an economic assessment to establish the benefits and value to the Water Companies in adopting the UAP, with information requests of our Project Partners 
3. Based on the Draft Design Specification, to independently produce at least three alternative potential designs, to be evaluated again through industry consultation 
4. To use feedback to help select a single design to develop further 

To get the right answers, we had to ask the right questions. The highly experienced Project Delivery team made sure that happened through engagement, openness and objectivity. 

The scope of this project was Innovation level 2; Concept & Feasibility, and it was our intent that no Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) would be retained. This gave us an objective focus, but also a freedom to be open when communicating.  

The result of our wide consultation with some high calibre individuals is that the industry was unanimous in confirming the need for a UAP, and provided us with an extremely challenging Draft Design Specification to design against.  

We then went back to them and presented four alternative conceptual designs that best met the Design Specification. The feedback we received was analysed and directed us to produce our final design  

The economic assessment, which looked at the demand side of the equation, sought confirmation of the potential use cases along with relative importance and likely number of installations per year against each use case.  

Throughout the UAP project, and in addition to the engagement at the formal workshops, our Project lead (Jeremy Heath) spoke about the UAP at a number of key industry conferences, one-to-one with all Water Companies in his UKWIR role and with Future Water regarding supply chain engagement.  

In conclusion, we believed in the need for the UAP at the beginning of the project, and defined an innovative and consultative process to confirm our conviction with the Industry; to understand the value to the Water Companies of installing them; and to see if we could overcome the technical and commercial challenges set out in the design specification with a design of UAP that could be taken forward to manufacture.  

We are more confident of the need for the UAP at the end of the process and have greater belief that a smart and innovative design has been selected and will provide years of service without issue, facilitating the insertion of a wide range of technologies both now and in the future