Arqiva Case Study

Smart Meters - Reducing water consumption through actionable intelligence

The Story

Arqiva is a leading UK communications infrastructure company, playing an essential role in bringing water-saving initiatives into consumers’ homes and providing them with the data to make better-informed decisions. The company was in the process of rolling out smart water meters to 15 million people across London and the South East – an area which is particularly water stressed. Arqiva believed that, with the right partner, adding smart water infrastructure would make leaks easier to detect and will help pipes to be fixed much more quickly, preserving this scarce resource.

Challenges

  • HOW TO ACCELERATE DEVELOPMENT 
  • COMPLEX VALIDATION, HANDLING AND PROCESSING OF LARGE VOLUMES OF DATA
  • SPEED UP SEMANTIC CONTENT HANDLING
  • ENRICH SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH & ANALYTICS CAPABILITIES

One Step to Success

Estafet’s job was to build an integrated Business Support System (BSS) that supported the reliable transfer and management of meter data to Arqiva and the water company’s corporate IT system. This would improve the accuracy of bills, reduce water loss, and provide actionable intelligence.

The project included complex validation, handling, and processing of large volumes of data, including a significant user interface and a variety of reports covering roll-out, readings, and alarms.  Central to the development was the successful integration of a number of existing systems and functions, such as the Service Desk, Billing, and Incident Management.

Estafet are technical specialists who can integrate complex systems. The relationship is characterised by collaboration and partnership to help us overcome challenges through innovative solutions.

The Solution

The solution encompassed numerous elements  including a web portal, a complex and scalable data layer, middleware for conveying and processing files, a staging file server, reporting and business intelligence, an SFTP server, and an operational dashboard.

Automated regression testing is critical to all our projects, so we created multifunctional teams dedicated to this.  We wired in tests to our automation tooling so we could trap and fix bugs early in the software delivery cycle. As a result we delivered high-quality code in short, incremental releases, allowing the business to respond rapidly to market conditions and changing needs.

Deliverables

  • HANDLING OF UNSTRUCTURED DATA
  • TESTING FRAMEWORK & QUALITY ASSURANCE
  • SUPPORTING THE BSS, FIXING DATA QUALITY ISSUES AND EXTENDING THE FUNCTIONALITY AS NEEDED

The Success

We worked on the smart metering initiative for two years and, using Agile delivery methods, delivered our commitments on time and on budget. The system has been live since April 2016 and the roll-out of smart meters has continued since that time.

Outcomes

  • REDUCING WATER CONSUMPTION THROUGH ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE
  • HIGHLY EFFICIENT AND QUALITY TEAM AUGMENTATION
  • REGULAR & RELIABLE RELEASES BUILD CONFIDENCE IN USERS