Smart network innovation, growth & transformation - 2016 in review

2016 has been a year of expansion, innovation and acceleration at i2O. Smart water networks are increasingly seen as a high impact, low cost and immediate way for water utilities to address the challenges they face: increasing populations, urbanisation, more extreme weather events, ageing infrastructure, and more demanding customers.

New i2O solutions expand what smart water networks can achieve

Innovation has been a major focus for i2O this year. In April, we announced dNet, a low-cost data logging and software solution to provide water utilities with accurate, reliable and affordable data from as many points on their network as possible. It has made i2O more accessible to a wider range of clients.

In March we announced oNet, bringing together pump and PRV control and optimisation into a single interface.

And finally, in July we launched iNet, software that increases the ability of water companies to analyse and receive insight from pressure and flow data. iNet is the first solution in the world to enable PRV maintenance to be based on condition rather than time, ensuring that effort is not wasted and only directed to issues when they arise.

More clients achieving significant savings using i2O solutions

Our innovation efforts have not gone unrewarded. The Water Supplies Department of Hong Kong, for instance, decided to deploy dNet to record and transmit detailed performance data relating to water demand, flow and pressure.

Esval-Aguas del Valle, the organisation responsible for supplying water across the majority of the Chilean regions of Valparaiso and Coquimbo, also selected dNet to help measure and monitor the performance of its water supply network.

Closer to home, South West Water became the first water company in the world to monitor the condition of its PRV assets using iNet’s advanced functionality. The UK utility has found i2O’s PRV condition monitoring to be 99.98% accurate.

It wasn't just a year for new clients, however. We’ve been helping our existing clients drive even greater financial, environmental and service improvements from their smart water networks.

Smart water network initiatives have enabled UK utility Anglian Water, for instance, to report record low levels of leakage and interruptions to supply this year. It has achieved a 32% reduction in bursts in areas with pressure management, saving more than 8.5 million litres every day, and aims to reduce its already low levels of leakage even further.

i2O is being recognised globally as the smart water network solutions leader

Finally, our year of change has seen significant transformation within i2O itself. We have welcomed many new people to the business in the UK, Malaysia, Spain and Colombia. While you can read about a few of them here, all of our new recruits are playing crucial roles driving our sales, marketing, software development and customer support efforts to even greater heights.

We opened a state-of-the-art assembly facility in Southampton, a move that doubled the manufacturing capacity we have at our disposal. We also redesigned our headquarters to provide space for our growing R&D, software and technical support teams.

As a result of efforts like these in 2016, and more than a decade of hard work that has gone into making i2O a global provider to more than 100 water utility clients, we were named as a smart water network technology market leader by Global Water Intelligence and by Lux Research this year.

We aren’t complacent though. 2016 has been a great year for i2O, with new people, new facilities, new clients and new technology, but there are still many more water utilities around the world that would gain significant benefit from making their networks smarter, and we have many more ideas to help them.

Water is fundamental for life and as populations grow and become more concentrated in urban environments, extreme weather events become more frequent and customers become more demanding, the role we play will become even more important. We look forward to taking on that challenge through 2017 and beyond.