Northern Ireland Water is encouraging businesses to apply to Invest Northern Ireland to pitch their innovative technology, product or service to key stakeholders in the water and wastewater sector at its second ‘Dragons Den’ style interactive event.

The Water Sector Innovation Event event will take place on Wednesday 26th September 2018 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Shaws Bridge, Belfast, where managers from NI Water, Irish Water and GB utility companies will be interested in hearing about the emerging innovative solutions for the sector.

Photo: winners from last year’s category ‘to develop Smart Water and Waste Water Networks’, Clearwater Controls with NI Water’s Director of Asset Management Paul Harper

Paul Harper, Director of Asset Delivery, NI Water commented:

“Following on from the success of the event last year, it was vital we run it again. The ‘dragons den’ style format proved to be very effective and so this year, it will follow that same style.

“The increasing pressure on water and wastewater systems means the products, services and methods we currently rely on need to adapt so that NI Water can continue to deliver high quality services and support the local economy. I’d encourage companies to apply to pitch their innovations to water industry experts from NI Water and Irish Water including NI Water’s own CEO Sara Venning”

Following last year’s successful event the winners, Clearwater Controls, BP McKeefry Ltd and Elutions were invited to workshops in which they were given the opportunity to engage in more detail with key NI Water staff and pilot projects are being run.

The event will provide an overview of current innovation in the water sector and will promote new innovative products and services that businesses are providing to local and global markets.

The event will focus on providing solutions in the following areas:

1. Solutions for Energy - product, process or system to achieve greater energy efficiency and carbon emission reduction with a particular interest in proven delivery in the following areas:

• Water / Waste Water Network Management tools – that focus on energy reduction
• Process analytics tools that are energy focused and demonstrate process improvements
• Analytics tools that detect energy changes at Asset level and provide asset investment decisions

2. Solutions for Sensing and Analytics

Instrumentation is used extensively throughout the asset base to provide information on the physical, biological and chemical state of processes and networks.

Utilities are keen to investigate the further utilisation of “smart sensors” that will provide real time analytics at a sustainable cost. This could include:

• hand held devices for field analytics
• early equipment fault detection
• leakage detection
• measurement of emergent contaminants

3.Solutions for People To enable staff to provide the excellent service expected by customers, investing in staff in terms of wellbeing, Learning & Development and giving them the necessary tools and equipment e.g. health and safety related, work wear or tools that just make jobs easier

4. Solutions for Customers - further enhancement of customers’ experience – for example:

• Early fault detection analytics tools
• Data systems that connect potential Asset failures to Customer events
• Connected networks

Suppliers will need to submit pitch information on an application form and email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it on or before Friday 3 August 2018.

Successful companies will be selected and asked to undertake a 5 minute pitch of their Technology, Product or Service to NI Water and key water sector supply chain companies at the Water Sector Innovation Event.

Click here to complete the application form