Thames Water’s results in July highlight that its debts have risen to £15.2bn in the year to March 2024. Additionally, the UK’s largest water company faces fierce criticism for its environmental record with the number of sewage discharges more than doubling in the last year.
When Ofwat published its draft ruling on how much water companies can charge their customers (Price Review 2024) the regulator also suggested the idea of placing Thames Water into a “special oversight administration” highlighting the urgent need for water companies to modernise fast because failing and outdated infrastructure is a crippling concern for the UK’s critical national infrastructure.
Managing and maintaining infrastructure is a constant challenge for water companies, not only is ageing infrastructure expensive to run but it requires substantial investment for repairs, replacements and upgrades. But until water companies adopt a more modern approach and stop trying to tackle today’s challenges with yesterday’s outdated methods and technology, these issues will only get bigger.
This is where GIS-based applications enable water utilities to tackle ageing infrastructure, allowing them to visualise, trace, and maintain their entire network. They can address and document ageing infrastructure in real time and manage maintenance through a single pane of glass. GIS applications can help water utilities change ageing infrastructure by prioritising what needs replacing first, based on historical evidence and predictive analytics derived from trained machine learning models.
Likewise, GIS applications are essential throughout the planning, design, and construction phases of infrastructure projects, and for recording as-built modifications. By leveraging GIS applications water companies can quickly and accurately trace, visualise and analyse various pipes, values, pumps and other components for replacement.
Using modern GIS apps, water utilities can make better-informed decisions, reduce risk, reduce costs and act quicker to ensure a more resilient water distribution network. The problems Thames Water faces are multi-faceted, as a result of years of underinvestment, and won’t be fixed overnight, but GIS software will certainly enable it to quickly get the most value from its data, improve business processes, and tackle ageing infrastructure.