When supplies are interrupted, we prioritise our customers who are most vulnerable.
Through our Priority Services Register we know which customers might need extra support or perhaps have health problems which make coping with interruptions to their supply particularly difficult.
Traditionally, we put a temporary supply in place by running hoses and pipes around, often needing to use pumps and generators.
As part of our Innovation Festival, we developed a mobile pumped water storage unit to change that.
The plan was to design a unit which could be delivered to the location of the interruption of supply and quickly connected to provide water for essentials like cooking and flushing the loo.
We built an initial prototype - a converted wheelie bin - which proved the concept and, working with our partners Furst Technologies, we’ve developed the idea into a version that can be used reliably on site.
Not only can MOWBIs be used individually, but they can be chained together to support greater water needs - for example, when faced with a burst pipe locally, we were able to provide an emergency supply to a nursery in Chelmsford using a set of MOWBIs which kept 80 children plus staff on site until the end of the day.
We’re now developing a TOWBI, a larger version of the MOWBI, to support commercial properties like vets or hairdressers where a stable water connection is a necessity.
Daniel Fletcher, Technical Supervisor, said: “It’s about lots of small wins adding up. If we can ease the disruption for individual households or individual businesses, it quite quickly starts to have a big impact across our operating areas. We know we’re ahead of the industry with this innovation, and I know our partners at Furst are looking at how to support other water companies to follow suit.”
MOWBI is an innovation which started intending to solve a problem but is already outgrowing that - there’s now a team of specialists building around it and the deployment of MOWBIs has become something that is built into our business-as-usual process for planned works.
It’s a practical solution, helping us provide a more reliable supply to the customers across our operating areas.