Water companies face a number of ongoing pressures, whether it be an ageing infrastructure or environmental regulations. However, one of the biggest operational concerns in the industry today is the delay in their communications when something goes wrong.
In an industry where pump failures, sewage overflows, burst mains or pollution events can occur unexpectedly, operators must be prepared to address these challenges urgently. Historically, detecting these problems when they occur hasn’t been much of an issue, as telemetry and monitoring systems can flag issues quickly. But, for the businesses relying on outdated or poorly designed communication technology, actioning a repair once a problem has been identified can be a very slow and arduous process. This needs to change.
Chris Potts, Marketing Director, ANT Telecom, believes that when every minute counts, communication cannot rely on tools designed for everyday office messaging and identifies the solutions on the market that can take water utilities to the next level…
The operational challenge
Communication is a big operational challenge for water utilities because the infrastructure involved often covers large geographic areas, including remote and hard-to-reach sites. Therefore, if a burst mains pipe occurs causing a water outage in an area, this could require multiple depots and many field staff working together to assess where the issue is and then they must coordinate between a large team to determine how this is fixed and how temporary supplies can be put in place for residents.
When such an issue is identified, it’s not a simple case of calling one engineer.. Incident response often depends on several disparate teams acting together, quickly. To be effective, control rooms therefore need instant visibility on who is responding, what actions are being carried out and what support may be required – and it’s the whole team that needs awareness of this..
The current state of play
In normal day-to-day operations, smartphones are commonplace as the main source of communication. Of course, these are useful for normal business communication. However, they aren’t suited to urgent field operations.
The reason for this is that calls can only connect one person at a time and can lead to repeated call chains. Even texting into a group chat on SMS or WhatsApp isn’t effective as they can be easily missed, delayed or buried in other notifications. On top of this, engineers could be working in noisy environments with their hands occupied meaning they don’t hear or can’t access their phones. Ultimately, using a standard smartphone leads to confusion, duplication, and slower decision-making, as they are not designed for live operational command and coordination. Yet, to be effective in this fast paced environment, teams and managers must know exactly what is happening and when a problem has been acted upon.
To be truly effective, water companies need communication that behaves more like an operational tool than a messaging channel. This is because incident response works best when everyone gets a message at the same time. So, ensuring that teams have access to business-grade group communication is critical to reducing the need for repeated calls and fragmented message threads. By facilitating this, supervisors can issue instructions quickly, while engineers can provide live updates in real time from any location they are working from. This helps create a shared operational picture during fast-moving events.
Introducing Push-to-Talk over Cellular
Push-to-Talk over Cellular Communication (PoC) can transform a water company’s communications here. This is because PoC has been specifically designed for teams working in the field. This technology has the simplicity of a two-way radio combined with wide reaching coverage provided by 4G/5G networks. The main benefit of this solution is that it allows users to speak instantly with colleagues or entire teams using a single button press, supporting communication between field engineers, supervisors, depots and control rooms.
The benefits of PoC are numerous. Suppose there is a pump failure at a remote pumping station. A team member using PoC technology will be able to alert relevant field engineers, response managers and contractors at the same time. This speeds operations up significantly because it removes the need to call people one at a time, or wait for everyone to read a WhatsApp message, allowing the team to identify who will be fixing the problem instantly. Another example of the benefits of PoC is during a sewage overflow, or pollution event when the likelihood is that field teams may need to be operating in several locations at once to solve many problems. By using PoC, they can share live updates on progress as the situation develops. This helps operation response managers understand what is happening in real time and aids the decision making process significantly e.g. where pollution response tankers need to be deployed as a priority based on live feedback from the field engineers.
When it comes to the deployment of PoC technology there are a range of dedicated PoC radios or rugged smartphones with integrated Push-to-Talk buttons. Alternatively, businesses can download an App on an existing company smartphone, enabling instant group communication with the device they already carry. The dedicated PoC radios are designed for frontline environments and provide louder audio, physical PTT buttons and accessories that make them easier to wear and operate during work. They are also designed to perform well in noisy environments, ensuring that important updates can still be heard while engineers are working around machinery or specialist equipment.
To conclude
For water utilities, communication can make a real difference to how quickly incidents are handled. By allowing teams the option to share updates in real-time through the use of PoC technology, they’re in a much stronger position to keep problems under control. Not only does PoC give field engineers, supervisors, depots and control rooms a practical, consistently reliable way to stay connected across wide areas, it also enables water utilities to move away from fragmented updates and towards a faster, more coordinated response when incidents occur.
