Utilities now have a wealth of data at their fingertips. But more numbers do not always add up to more helpful information. That is why a strategic approach to managing data and deploying digital technology is so important.
The tech is available, but the real challenge can often lie in identifying which solutions can have the most significant impact – particularly in the context of a utility’s unique operation.
In my work with water and wastewater utilities in the Great Lakes region, and throughout my tenure as a utility leader for the City of Grand Rapids, Michigan, I’ve found that the biggest hurdle when it comes to digital adoption is knowing where to start, and how to scale. Every community has its own strategic goals and regulatory demands, and all of those need to be satisfied, often with stretched teams and finite resources.
What I’ve learned is that, while utility operations can be complicated, digital transformation doesn’t have to be — and that applies no matter the utility size or where a utility is on its digital journey.
To explore this idea further, Xylem spoke to 18 global water, wastewater, and stormwater utility leaders and experts about the practical lessons they’ve learned when it comes to digital adoption. Their insights, captured in Ripple Effect: A Movement Toward Digital Transformation, a new paper from Xylem and Bluefield Research, offer a candid and pragmatic view of the challenges and opportunities of digitization.
Though the experts Xylem spoke with span the scope of utility locations, sizes, and resources, one common thread ran through each of their experiences: the need to put strategy before technology to be the best servant leaders they could be for their communities. For those utilities, going digital is not an outcome, it is a way to solve problems.
In practice, that means avoiding the impulse to dive straight into digital. Instead, a utility should define operational challenges and priority goals, and shape digital programs around them. Digital programs must drive actionable outcomes.
By deploying solutions that explicitly align with strategic priorities, digital investments will deliver measurable results and create momentum for further innovation. With this approach, utilities can also accelerate progress by using data already at hand, unlocking more value from infrastructure already in place.
Strategy before technology
This principle of putting strategy before technology and accelerating progress using available data has reaped dividends for the Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD) of Greater Cincinnati, Ohio, and the City of South Bend, Indiana.
In evaluating their existing infrastructure, assets, and data sets, each utility identified an opportunity to “turn on the lights” within their respective sewer systems and resolve operational problems to deliver remarkable results for their communities. What’s more, each utility is now utilizing the data they are gathering today to anticipate and mitigate potential future problems.
In South Bend, Xylem has been working closely with Kieran Fahey, the city’s Long-Term Control Plan (LTCP) Director as the utility rolls out data-driven, digitally enabled control strategies to prevent sewer overflows pouring into the St. Joseph’s River. Initially facing an estimated US$713 million in capital improvements to rectify the issue, the city looked for a more affordable route forward — and digital paved the way.
Having already implemented a sewer-monitoring system to pinpoint problem spots for maintenance almost a decade earlier, South Bend saw an opportunity to do more with the data it already had. The team quickly realized they could use the smart sensor data they were gathering not just for immediate maintenance, but also for future infrastructure planning.
Since implementing its real-time network optimization and decision support system, South Bend has reduced combined sewer overflow volumes by more than 80% and delivered a 50% reduction in E. coli concentrations in the St. Joseph River. The city is also meeting its environmental commitments a decade or more ahead of schedule.
This is a best-case example of defining the problem, aligning strategy with operational priorities and regulatory expectations, and using existing data to deliver measurable results. The approach ultimately saved the City of South Bend, and by extension its ratepayers, $400 million in capital expenditures.
Automated, optimized asset control
Nearby, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the MSD of Greater Cincinnati approached its digital transformation with a similar mindset.
MSD serves a population of greater than 800,000, spread out across 290 square miles, using combined stormwater and sanitary sewer systems — some of which were constructed more than a century ago. Dealing with increased volumes of sewer overflows, and with mitigation costs proving far too much to pass along to ratepayers, the utility needed to optimize.
Reese Johnson, Compliance Services Division Superintendent, wanted better control over the utility’s buried collection system. Xylem worked with the utility to implement a real-time decision support solution that delivers automated, optimized control of existing assets. The utility then took its combined sewer overflow (CSO) monitoring data, flow monitors, and real-time control facilities, and tied them together in a SCADA system.
MSD has now reduced sewer overflow volumes by 247 million gallons and saved US$38 million in the process. Furthermore, the utility achieved its overflow-mitigation targets for less than $0.01 per gallon, a saving of 90% when compared with the original estimated cost.
A moment of opportunity
With more than 400,000 water, wastewater, and stormwater systems worldwide — from small rural utilities to consolidated national providers serving millions — every digital transformation will be different. But there are common, thoughtful, and systematic approaches that can advance progress and deliver powerful outcomes.
For those utilities who are early on in their digital journey, using their strategic goals and the regulatory backdrop as a starting point will help determine where digital solutions can add value. Then, by cataloging the real-time data currently available, they can determine where more detailed data can support operational and planning decisions.
Once a utility can see that “north star” and understand what is already at its disposal, it can move on to evaluate how digital solutions can add value through a Phase 0-Project — a low-cost route to determine the challenges, opportunities, and potential return on investment (ROI). Then, it can prioritize projects and investments accordingly.
It’s important to remember that there are no “big bang” transformations, just intentional and incremental improvements over time. The utility leaders in Ripple Effect have worked through some of the thorniest issues and opportunities of digital adoption, but what their stories demonstrate is that what starts as a ripple can quickly become a transformative wave.
