digging deep – how to manage internal sewer flooding

Co-written by James Harrison, from Yorkshire Water

Internal sewer flooding (ISF) can be disastrous for water companies and their customers. For the individual resident the effects of an event can leave a home uninhabitable. For the water company the financial penalties are understandably eyewatering. The new AMP7 regulations look likely to step these up, further putting pressure on water companies to ensure every possible procedure is in place to avoid ISF happening in the first place.

Dean Wheeler from Egremont Group and James Harrison from Yorkshire Water set out below three practical ways to reduce unnecessary costs incurred from the hefty penalties charged for ISF incidents.

Get the basics right

Make sure that maintenance across the sewerage network is proactive, carried out correctly and on time. Too often the pressure of budget cuts can lead to a focus on short term wins rather than the bigger picture. Occasionally this results in relaxing the schedule so much that the maintenance of vital assets is missed altogether. Dean Wheeler advises “If the engineers focus on reacting to fires rather than blowing out the candles the results could be devastating further down the line. It is far better to maintain the assets regularly than to uncover years of poor maintenance once an ISF event, and subsequent penalty, has occurred.”

Right first time, every time

Promoting a culture where success is equated with the number of jobs done in a day will never be helpful in the long run. Particularly if there is no accountability for how well the job is done. By taking the time to fix the problem properly rather than patching it up quickly to tick it off the job sheet, will save the workforce from expensive repeat visits in the future.

James Harrison from Yorkshire Water explains: “By examining maintenance schedules we discovered that half of all of repeat visits took place two weeks after the initial work was completed. We quickly realised that while spending more time fixing the initial problem properly would mean more operator time spent up front, this cost could be quickly recouped by removing the extra operator time spent attending the repeat visit. Plus, we would avoid the large regulatory penalties every time a sewer floods internally and the reputational damage with our customers caused by a repeat incident.”

Dean Wheeler adds: “Further data analysis at Yorkshire Water of a particular area of the network revealed that 73% of repeat visits were coming from just 47 properties in one estate. These repeat visits could cost up to £55m over the course of AMP7. By deep diving into the data proactively the team identified where investment is needed in the infrastructure to fix a recurring problem early and ultimately save money across the course of the AMP.”

Centralising the Knowledge

In 2019 Yorkshire Water insourced their non-civil sewerage activity in readiness for the new AMP. This was also combined with an upscaling of the non-civils fleet and a large recruitment drive bringing in employees who were new to the industry.  This created the challenge of how to integrate a new and inexperienced workforce into an upscaled frontline operation.

James Harrison explains the problem: “The challenge laid down by the regulator in the most recent AMP performance levels means that water companies need to invest across the asset base. New recruits require a specific skill set which is not readily available in the market, making the recruitment process slow. We quickly realised that we would need to utilise the skills within our existing team if we were going to meet the regulator’s targets while onboarding new team members to boost our workforce.”

At Yorkshire Water, the management brought together a team of experienced sewerage engineers, who normally worked independently of each other, and based them in a centralised office location. New field engineers were able to draw on this centralised resource while out on the job, utilising video technology to relay any issues back to HQ. This way the new engineers were able to fix more problems in the field at the first attempt, knowing that they had the reassurance of a second opinion. Dean Wheeler comments: “The Yorkshire Water team immediately saw results. At the end of the pilot the team achieved a 50% reduction in repeat incidents and a 55% reduction in follow-on work.”

James Harrison concluded: “By drawing on an experienced and centralised team, in real time, our new workforce received their training on the job rather than learning theory in an office. Hands-on experience started immediately, backed up by our existing team who could virtually oversee the work of a far larger number of new engineers. We found that this worked much better than traditional methods and we are able to continue servicing our network while training new staff.”

Creating a Centre of Excellence for field maintenance teams has been a useful blueprint for Yorkshire Water. Initially rolled out across maintenance to aid in ISF, it has been taken up by the planning and scheduling teams. In these times of social distancing this method has enabled the business to share the experience held by the entire workforce, without being physically present. What started as a single team of six people working five days a week, is now 20 people working seven days a week with plans to replicate the team across a number of different departments.

Lessons for the future

Summing up, Dean Wheeler said: “Rather than dealing with ISF after the event, taking the time to assess previous incidents to establish a pattern can lead to proactive maintenance schedules which will fix the issue before it becomes a major incident. Drawing on the existing experience within the team and deploying them from a Centre of Excellence is best way to train the volume of new staff needed to satisfy the new AMP7 regulations.”

ISF is not a new problem, but finding new ways to deal with it can be the difference between happy or irate customers and avoiding serious financial penalties.

This article first appeared in the Autumn Edition of Institute of Water

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