SA Water wins top award

SA Water and Horizon Power have been jointly awarded Australian Digital Utility of the Year at the Digital Utility awards in Melbourne.

The award recognises the companies’ positions as industry leaders on integrating digital and smart technologies with infrastructure, to better manage complex networks for the benefit of customers.

SA Water and Horizon Power have been awarded Australian Digital Utility of the Year at the Digital Utility awards in Melbourne. — SA Water Digital Team Ivan Jose, Rick Lewis, Toby Evans, Murray Owen-Turner and Eliza Gruszecka

SA Water’s General Manager Customer Delivery Kerry Rowlands said the corporation is using new and emerging technologies such as digital sensors, the internet-of-things and smart phone accessibility to improve the way it meets the changing needs and expectations of its customers.

“Digitally driven communications have strongly influenced the way businesses connect to their customers, and we’re now using data and digital information to improve the services and experience we deliver to our residential and business customers,” Ms Rowlands said.

“New online solutions are enabling customers to more easily report faults and manage accounts via their computer or smart phone.”

“Business customers in the CBD are also able to actively monitor their water consumption through smart meters, to quickly identify anomalies and implement improved water management practices,” she said.

The awards also recognised SA Water’s smart water network installed in Adelaide’s CBD, which includes acoustic sensors, pressure and flow data, high speed transient pressure sensors, smart meters and water quality sensors. The network allows SA Water to identify anomalies, repair faults, reduce disruptions and improve responses to unplanned work.

“Empowering our own people with improved digital systems is also changing the way we deliver services to our customers – and safety to our workers,” Ms Rowlands said.
“Paper trails are history for our field crews who now use a custom-built app to dispatch jobs to field staff who can update jobs as they arrive, undertake the repair and complete it.”

“Our customers’ needs and expectations will always be our number one focus, but this award is a wonderful recognition of our teams’ efforts in the digital space.”