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United Utilities Waste Water

Challenge: To improve the speed, accuracy and quality of the data returned by field agents for reporting to Ofwat from 28 days to 1 minute, and to increase the accuracy of the data used for their £2 billion infrastructure investment program.

Solution: A solution incorporating a digital pen to enable data to be integrated into the United Utilities SIRS reporting system.

Benefits: Near instant access to field data, increased accuracy and reduced administration costs.

Customer

United Utilities PLC was created from the merger of North West Water and Norweb in November 1995.

Its principal activities are managing and operating the regulated electricity distribution, water and wastewater networks in North West of England, which is a region with a population of around 7 million.
United Utilities is a member of the FTSE 100 group of leading UK listed companies and employs over 17,000 people.

Challenge

The existing form that a waste water field agent completes after a pollution incident occurs contains important information which is needed to meet the regulatory commitment for reporting to the industry regulator Ofwat. The same information is also used to help drive United Utilities £2 billion investment program. The existing form and manual process took up to 28 days with multiple delays and checks by different companies and departments. Because of this, United Utilities were finding that additional manual administration work was required to maintain accuracy.

The challenge facing United Utilities was to ensure that the agents completed the form correctly and the data was entered into their report system far quicker.

Solution

The form was re-designed to make it simpler to complete and to be compatible with the digital pen, at the same time a new portable office folder was designed to ensure agents had a pen, a solid writing surface and space for the forms.

Benefits

The benefits of the digital pen and paper solution for United Utilities PLC are extensive these include:-

Forms are now available to United Utilities staff and agents in less than a minute after being completed.
The data on the forms is now guaranteed to be much more accurate and complete.
The agents no longer have to post or fax their completed forms thus saving them many wasted hours and lost forms.
Incident details are now processed in a matter of days (sometimes hours) rather than weeks
Improved accuracy means reduced costs of manual processing, improved reporting and more informed investment decisions.
The reduction in time to complete forms increased productivity of the field agents.