United Utilities (UU) has started the procurement process inviting innovative companies to apply for a place on its ten week Innovation Lab programme.
The water company is looking to the market to identify innovative businesses to help it tackle key efficiency, safety and customer challenges in innovative ways.
The selection process involves 3 stages of down selection - Application Stage, Ideas Stage and finally, Pitch Day when the top scoring candidate in each lot will be awarded a place in the Innovation Lab along with the 3 next highest scoring candidates from all lots.
At both Ideas Stage and Pitch Day, candidates can be rejected if their idea has no innovative aspects to it, is not likely to be of benefit or relevance to UU or it would be not possible to develop the idea substantially during the time available in the lab.
UU will pay each successful candidate up to £5,000 for legal costs for participants to review and understand the contract terms before entering the Lab.
Successful candidates who gain a place on the 10-week programme will co-locate and work with closely with UU to develop, improve, test and demonstrate their idea, potentially in live environments. A supply arrangement may follow.
United Utilities is also looking for a return on its investment in the Innovation Lab. In order to pass through to the Ideas Stage, interested suppliers must confirm in their application that they are willing to offer UU one or more of the following:
- the option to take share capital (i.e. an equity stake) in the company owning the idea
- the right to receive a share in the sales of the resulting product(s) developed in the Lab;
- and / or equivalent rights to share in the proceeds generated from the ideas developed in the Lab, for example by way of assignment of Intellectual Property Rights.
Businesses are being invited to put forward proposals in the following key areas;
Lot 1 Connected Water & Customer
How can Internet of Things (IoT) in the home in the form of smart meters, IoT appliances, and sensors work together to ensure water issues are identified before they become a burden to the customer? How can the tools be used to find new ways of managing water and help customers manage their water spend better?
Lot 2 Proactive Customer Actions
United Utilities want to be more efficient so they can do more for their customers for less. How can new technology, particularly predictive or monitoring solutions that can be applied to water and wastewater networks, enable United Utilities to pre-emptively fix issues before a customer notices or complains? What technologies have the potential to help the customer save money, reduce local flooding or protect the environment via enabling self-control of their water usage or wastewater disposal?
Lot 3 Safe and Healthy Worker
United Utilities has over 5 000 employees working across the business and many more in their supply chain. Many of these are lone workers, working remotely from the central team on tasks such as asset repair, maintenance, visiting customers and moving from job to job.
The water company has recently introduced mobile devices to many of their employees and these could be enabled with new technologies or solutions to help with coordination and performance.
How can United Utilities better collect, learn from and distribute knowledge? Help ensure the safety of team members in the field? Or maximise time on jobs by prioritising workloads in real-time? Solutions here could come from many fields, including wearable technology, connected transport or tools distributed via mobile devices.
Lot 4 Predictive Asset Maintenance
United Utilities carries out reactive maintenance every day which could have been avoided if the team were able to better assess and predict the condition of the asset and works required.
What predictive tools can pull together data sources (temperature, acoustics and pressure), network knowledge, traits of certain geographies, materials, water hardness to detect when bursts are going to happen and where? Tools like VR, IoT, and sensors could all be employed to help United Utilities serve the network proactively.
Lot 5 Future of Water
Automation and environmental considerations are increasingly taking a front-seat in water operations. How can United Utilities stay ahead of the curve and work with future technologies in the energy, AI, robotics space to maintain the highest levels of customer service and reduce costs via greater automation and reduce energy consumption at the same time?
Following the completion of the Innovation Lab, UU may enter into a supply agreement with one or more participants.
Deadline for requests to participate is 18th September 2017. Prior to that United Utilities is running a webinar to explain the application process on 5th September 2017. Click here to access the documentation.