Dee Valley Water PLC

“Analyzing Customer Data Effectively”

How can a water utility in Wales more effectively manage its assets to improve customer service?

That was the goal of MWH’s asset management program for Dee Valley Water PLC in Wrexham, Wales.

The Dee Valley Water utility is not big by UK standards, but it faces stiff competition from larger firms. The utility services 250,000 people, with an average of 73ML/d drinking water. Its assets include more than 1,900 km of water mains, 7 impounding reservoirs and 36 water towers.

Dee Valley Water was eager to improve its response to customer concerns. However, its existing systems made it cumbersome to access data required to respond efficiently to customer letters or telephone calls.

These systems also lacked the necessary integration to support new business processes required by changing regulatory reporting procedures. Additionally, the existing geographic information system (GIS) used for analyzing and storing water network data -– as well as the workflow system for managing customer concerns – were inflexible and hindering business development.

System Integration Program

Dee Valley Water commissioned MWH to develop a pilot integration program that included building a data warehouse and replacing their GIS system. The pilot’s success led the utility to move forward with a new customer contact management system that was integrated with the data warehouse.

The MWH solution for Dee Valley Water included:

• MS SQL database
• Switched network
• Data warehousing of water quality and customer billing/meter data (with geo referencing of data)
• Microstation Geowater? for water distribution asset data
• Bespoke customer concern application

MWH migrated Dee Valley’s existing GIS data to a Microstation Geowater? system based on an MS SQL database. The existing geo-referenced asset data was used to build a network model of the utility’s water distribution system.

This new system replaced the other system’s functionality, and allowed minimal staff retraining. It also provided powerful features for managing assets as a network. Now Dee Valley’s operation staff has easy access to geo-referenced water quality data, billing data, meter data and customer history.

A data warehouse is at the center of the integrated system. This provides the utility with the ability to analyze customer-related data at a level never before possible. Dee Valley can access reports on thematic maps of customer call types, operation performances and other topics.

As a result, the integrated system allows Dee Valley to:

• Log and track customer concerns easily and accurately
• Handle responses to customer concerns more effectively, based on integrated relevant data
• Manage performance reporting on customer concerns
• Improve asset data
• Analyze data from across the organization
• Evaluate utility’s performance in various areas
• Allocate new expenditures more effectively

By integrating the systems with an incremental approach, MWH allowed Dee Valley Water to retain control over the investments and business process changes. Our experts worked closely with the client to deliver a solution that was flexible and open, facilitating future enhancements without tying the client to potentially expensive technologies.