Northumbrian Water wins top spot in Water Industry Forum innovation awards

Northumbrian Water Group has bagged the overall winner spot in the Water Industry Forum’s tenth anniversary Innovation Awards with its national register of underground assets.

Northumbrian’s collaboration with the Geospatial Commission on the National Underground Asset Register (NUAR), built on a concept first developed with Ordnance Survey at the water firm’s 2018 Innovation Festival. I provides a single, digital underground map of utility assets to the benefit of businesses, customers, local government and the environment related to digging up of roads and infrastructure,

The awards include three other categories:

customer impact – won by Yorkshire Water and R2M with battery-powered, mobile network-connected valve actuators;

environmental Impact – picked up by United Utilities with catchment systems thinking: flexible permitting in the Petteril Catchment; and

societal Impact which also went to Northumbrian Water’s NUAR.

The awards, accord to WIF, “recognise the exceptional innovations implemented and developed by WIF members over the last decade for the benefit of the UK water sector.”

WIF – a forum for independent discussion on key water sector issues completed its merger with British Water on April 1, 2022. WIF executive director, Peter Drake, said: ‘Following our recently announced merger, we now look forward to building on what we have achieved to date and expanding our activities as an independent subsidiary of British Water”.