Scottish Water Expects to Make Efficiency Savings From New GIS

Esri UK today announced that Scottish Water has selected ArcGIS enterprise to expand and improve how geographic data is used across the business, to help meet its long-term strategic goals and generate efficiency savings. ArcGIS will be used to improve the quality of asset data, network modelling and risk analysis and enable new ways of working in the field.

Replacing a legacy system which had become difficult to update and adapt, ArcGIS will consolidate all users onto a single platform, accelerate the introduction of GIS services and increase collaboration across Scottish Water’s strategy, planning, investment and customer service delivery teams. Esri UK won the contract following an open tender involving 20 vendors. Phase one of the new project is due to go live in Spring 2017.

“GIS is core to our business and sits at the very heart of how we manage our vast water and wastewater network, but there’s so much more that can be achieved with it,” said Robert Murray, Head of Asset Intelligence, Scottish Water. “Esri’s ArcGIS will help us to deliver improved levels of service to our customers. By driving more value out of our GIS across the company, it will help us to keep the cycle running smoothly while we keep customer prices low. Esri UK was a perfect match for our ambitions due to its utility expertise and exciting pipeline of innovative future developments.”

Operational dashboards created with ArcGIS will allow Scottish Water to examine its network alongside other data layers, such as assets inspections, water quality testing, customer contact and complaints or work orders, placing them all in geographical context and providing a better picture of what is happening across the network.

Future innovative projects will include integrating video from drone surveys into the GIS and automating the analysis of footage to identify features, helping to improve the efficiency of asset investigations and the reliability and resilience of the network. Online maps will also improve how customers interact with Scottish Water by introducing self-serve applications.

Nisarg Hirani, Head of IT Partnership Management, Scottish Water, commented: “We selected Esri’s ArcGIS as it represented the best value for money and was most closely aligned with our business strategy. The company’s proven track record in utilities and market share gave us the confidence its platform would help de-risk our IT estate, while its dedication to GIS and the development of truly innovative solutions was also very impressive.”

Kevin Doughty, Head of Utilities at Esri UK said: “Pioneering organisations like Scottish Water are driving increased business value from GIS by making it more available to staff right across the company. New GIS applications are helping to make people’s jobs easier, reveal new insights and introduce more efficient processes. Esri UK is proud to be helping Scottish Water deliver a prestige service that customers across the country can rely on.”

Scottish Water is one of the UK’s top performing water companies, with an average household charge which continues to be among the lowest in Great Britain. The company continues to provide one of the UK’s best value water and waste water services.

Robert Murray added: “The quality of drinking water received by our customers has never been higher, while we’ve achieved record environmental performance and customer satisfaction.

“Customers are at the heart of our business and they expect us to build on the significant improvements we’ve made to water services while providing value for money, stability and certainty in charge levels.”