South West Water Leakage Detection Services

Since 2018, RPS has been working with South West Water, providing expert leakage detection services through our team of leakage engineers. We’ve been instrumental in helping our client improve their urban and rural networks and supporting them to deliver their regulatory targets.

Key details

Client:

South West Water

Location:

Devon, Cornwall and Bournemouth

Services provided:

  • Active leakage detection
  • Digital surveying
  • Leakage and data analysts (customer side)

Challenge

South West Water has an ageing and complex water network, with a large proportion of it located rurally. Traditional methods of leakage detection were proving insufficient and as such, new techniques of water leakage detection needed to be implemented.

When we sourced and trialled appropriate Digital Surveyor technology for this project, an additional challenge emerged, of upskilling the leakage workforce and delivering a rapid in-house training and development programme for them.

Leakage DCWW 2.jpg

Solution

Using our deep expertise in leakage detection, we led projects to source and trial innovative technological solutions, such as acoustic loggers and listening devices. These ‘Digital Surveyors’ allowed us to cover the network more efficiently, collecting sound samples that were then analysed centrally by our experts and distributed to experienced leakage engineers in the field.

At every stage of this project, we maximised productivity and output of the workforce, focussing on training and developing our Digital Surveyors. This would help us prep the expert leakage engineers of tomorrow, building a legacy for both RPS and South West Water.

Result

Our innovative solutions ensured that our Digital Surveyors were able to cover 4.5 km of the water network per day on average, collecting sound samples at all available assets. Our expert leakage engineers could then tactically deploy to specific points of interest, driving a 25% increase in productivity on detected leaks.

We enhanced our initial four year Framework with South West Water and diversified our service offering, increasing our resource base over six-fold from 12 to 80 full time engineers.

Project statistics

4.5
Kilometres of daily water network coverage on average
80
Full time leakage engineers on project
25
% increase in productivity on leakage detection

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