How water owner/operators can unlock billions from capital delivery programmes with a holistic view of the digital information lifecycle.

Reinvest billions in your assets by driving data transfer efficiencies.

Imagine a world in which your capital delivery alliances received trusted information so smoothly that they could start a project with the highest quality data possible. Imagine the operational part of your business was set up to receive the high-quality digital asset data your capital delivery alliances sent back.

These ideas may seem simply “nice to have” right now, but this shift in digital efficiency is crucial as the water capital delivery market skyrockets from approximately £51billion in AMP7 to £88billion in AMP8 – putting pressure on businesses to deliver twice the investment while also meeting increasingly ambitious regulatory outcomes. The water industry is not alone; supply chains are stretched across other utilities industries to meet a similar scale of increase in the next 5-10 years.

What’s needed now is to bridge the capacity gap created by scale and supply chain constraints. We need to drive different thinking in the market by introducing different types of delivery practice and increasing digital collaboration and continuity.

And we can use these to improve information management throughout the entire asset lifecycle and address the two main pain points of the current water owner/operator and delivery alliance relationship: inefficiency at the information delivery stage; ineffective content at the handover stage.

Challenge one: Inefficient client/delivery alliance information exchange.

In the current setup, large siloes between client and delivery alliance often lead to data loss, duplication of effort, and the potential for missing out on crucial information needed for informed decision-making. The resulting recapture and revalidation lead to a sharp drop off in momentum at the first interface.

What’s the solution?

Smoothing that interface is crucial to prove a solid on-ramp to delivery. Enabling capital delivery alliances to start a project with the best, most trusted information possible.

It’s a challenge we’ve answered for a water company operating in England – designing a comprehensive, integrated Information Management program through extensive stakeholder engagement, detailed workshops, process mapping, piloting, and iterative improvements.

This implementation saw almost immediate improvements in efficiency with streamlined information exchange processes that unlocked cost savings and reduced the need for additional recruitment to meet greater demands.

Standardised collection and management practices ensured high-quality asset data, which is essential for optimising operations and decision-making, while also improving the transfer and retention of the information gathered from capital delivery. Collaboration was smoother thanks to improved information sharing across various teams, which is now empowering individuals, breaking down silos, and facilitating smoother knowledge transfers. Additionally, the company benefits from increased compliance and alignment with adherence to ISO 19650 standards, all while ensuring consistency with industry best practices that align with its official information charter.

Challenge two: Ineffective use of rich content.

Though improving, the water industry is a few years behind industries like manufacturing and aerospace in their design practices, leading to the second pain point in the owner/operator and delivery alliance relationship.

At the end of the project, the delivery alliance is ready to hand over strong capital delivery generated content which would be of high value to operational colleagues. For example, 3D models, a wealth of asset information, all the procurement plans, costs, delivery programs, health & safety risks, etc. However, the operational part of the client’s business isn’t set up to receive this rich digital data and ends up with 2D paper and PDF content instead.

What’s the solution?

Over the next five years of investment, owner/operations should be enriching their asset data, rather than losing it or paying for it but not getting it.

We’re working across the industry to upskill clients in the rich content their alliances are creating and solidify their understanding of the value it would be to their operational and asset management businesses.

The idea is to use capital delivery as the vehicle to feed the organisation with high-quality asset data. To update asset and data systems and increase the general asset data quality by asking for the right stuff up front and then using it in a digital enterprise.

The future of intelligent capital delivery.

Bringing together these two ideas, you can take a holistic view of your digital information lifecycle and see a continuous increase in uptick of data quality for both owner/operators and capital delivery alliances.

Capital delivery projects get more efficient, asset management and asset operations/maintenance are improved because they have higher quality asset data to start with, and you can also make better operational decisions.

In terms of tangible benefits, the client we referenced in challenge one saw a 30% process efficiency simply through improvements to existing data transfer. Tested on a very small sliver of the portfolio, they unlocked around £8 million in addressable benefit over the next five years.

Given they estimated around 10-20% of the value of their capital programme was spent gathering asset information and intervention planning, driving efficiencies and increasing the general level of asset data quality could unlock billions across the UK water market. Which could be reinvested in assets and asset improvement.

How do we get there?

To achieve this future, we need a more intelligent owner/operator who is more deeply integrated with their delivery vehicles and supply chains. Owner/operators must recognise that an increasing part of their business is not just operating assets but also in delivery of new assets. As such, owner/operators must transform their businesses to reflect this, rather than just fully relying on the supply chain to perform that function.

This will require a capability development engagement to understand missing capabilities across their systems, people, and processes. Stay tuned for the next instalment of our ‘Future of Capital Delivery’ series, in which we’ll explore the changing roles of the owner/operator and the Digital Delivery Partner in the modern capital delivery lifecycle.

In the meantime, get in touch to understand why Capgemini is your number one trusted business and technology transformation partner to help you use more data-driven and digital practices to increase the efficiency of each individual resource, bring in new types of thinking, and take innovation into AMP8.

Explore our ‘Future of Series’ blog page, click here to learn more.