Water & Sewerage Journal 37

Analytics tomanage sludgeproduction

Niki Roach Business Modelling Associates, and Andrew Calvert, Yorkshire Water Services

In 2013, Yorkshire Water (YW) began tore-think the way it optimises its sludgetreatment and recycling processes.Rather than simply optimise eachindividual process unit, YW began toconsider the unit cost of sludgeproduction across the whole of thevalue chain. The objective was tounderstand the lowest cost option foroperating assets in a dynamic

environment. This shift in thinkingtowards sludge production planninghas enabled the organisation toconsider the full impact of individual orcombined decisions on both sludgeoperational performance and its costs.

Once the dependencies betweendecisions and cost were betterunderstood, the YW team looked tounderstand real-time capacity,

headroom, bottlenecks and themarginal cost of sludge treatment. Thistype of information, considered withup-to-date information each week, hassupported improved decision-makingaround prioritisation of maintenanceactivity on sludge assets.

The recent Ofwat Water 2020consultation, and proposedintroduction of a market for sludge

SLUDGE PLANNING

The asset base, internal structures and geographies that exist within water companies canmake understanding the overall impact of a single decision challenging. When multipleoptions are being evaluated in a dynamic operational environment, such as sludge treatment,the complexity of the trade-offs can become overwhelming and lead to silo thinking andsuboptimal decision-making.

Thermal hydrolysis plant construction at Yorkshire Water’s Esholt WwTW serving the City of Bradford

within the water industry in Englandand Wales, has highlighted to YorkshireWater the importance of having a clearview of its unit costs. Additionally, theintroduction of a separate price controlcreates a catalyst to drive increasinglytargeted efficiencies for sludgeprocessing.

Data-driven decisionsYW’s approach to business analyticshas matured across recent AssetManagement Plan (AMP) periods.Historically, descriptive analyticsincluding scorecards and performancereporting drove business improvement.Throughout AMP5, diagnostic analyticswere also used with regular root-causeanalyses being carried out tounderstand why events had occurred.While valuable, this type of dataanalytics is not able to deliver forecastsor provide plans to optimise futureactivity. In a dynamic operationalenvironment, such as sludge treatment,scorecards and root-cause analysiscouldn’t help YW make the leap fromsilo thinking to end-to-endoptimisation.

Creating a production-planningapproach to sludge required both a

technological and cultural change tooccur. This entails going beyond theconventional business scorecards of afew metrics reported in arrears weekly,monthly or quarterly. Productionplanning provides a wider rangingdashboard of measures that arerecorded and monitored in as near realtime as possible.

YW, in partnership with BusinessModelling Associates (BMA),embedded a decision-support tool, theSludgeOps DST. Underpinned byleading-edge analytics, SludgeOpsDST provides a data-driven view ofsludge processes. The analyticshierarchy, shown in figure 1, highlightsthe progression that YW made from

Esholt WwTW’S thermal hydrolysis plant

Source: Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning(Davenport/Harris): Gartner

EVOLUTION OF QUESTIONS

Water & Sewerage Journal 39

Water & Sewerage Journal 41

using historic data to make decisions,to using technology to prescribe theoptimal future actions, minimising costand increasing efficiency.

Culturally, YW refocused its activities tobring people together in performancehubs around the outputs of theSludgeOps DST. These daily andweekly hubs review the previous week’sperformance against the plan, look foropportunities to improve andcontinually refine the plan for theforthcoming weeks.

The benefits of thisapproachEach of the teams that are involvedthroughout the sludge process nowhave clearer targets and performanceexpectations. These targets are basedon the outputs of the SludgeOps DSTand show both the process andfinancial impact of achievingperformance. The weekly hubs and useof SludgeOps have increased both thespeed of response to operationalchallenges and identification ofopportunities to improve performance.

In each weekly hub, the team use theSludgeOps DST for:

• Maintenance prioritisation

• Outage planning (planned &reactive)

• Sludge movement optimisation totreatment facilities

• Resource and vehicle availabilityplanning

• Energy-generation planning

• Compliance, decision making andprioritisation

Sludge throughput, as well as energygeneration through the sludge assetbase have increased. This overallperformance improvement is attributedto the aggregate impact of regularimprovement across all parts of thesludge process. SludgeOps has beeninstrumental in highlighting theconnectivity throughout sludgetreatment and recycling, helping toavoid silo thinking.

Culturally, the team report that sludge isnow a calmer world with SludgeOpsbeing used to run scenarios to supportbusiness continuity planning andcapital investment. Decisions are now

data driven and objective, and the toolhas provided the team with choicesabout how to achieve the best outcomefor the sludge process.

What next?SludgeOps DST is based onoperational costs. However, the teamare starting to use it in light of the recentOfwat markets consultation to get aclearer view of their unit rate fortreatment. The scenario capability ofthe tool has enabled the team to look ata range of potential options and assessthe impact on the business. In responseto this consultation, SludgeOps mayalso be expanded to include returnliquors.

Operationally, the team are beginningto look across a longer time horizonand will be carrying out monthlyreviews to analyse where there aredifferences between planned andactual performance.

Longer-term plans include using themodelling technology to predict thereactive failure of assets and creating aprobabilistic view of the failure rates ofkit in an operational environment.

The sludge production-planningapproach at YW is continually evolving,with ongoing enhancements to boththe SludgeOps and the weekly hubmeetings. The approach has deliveredsuccess through increased sludgethroughput and energy generation. The two key factors in delivering thesesuccesses were the use of analytics indecision-making and managing sludgeas a single process. While the prospectof a separate price control for sludgemay appear challenging, YW is in astrong position to understand its unitcosts and drive further efficienciesthroughout the process.

The gas bag at Esholt WwTW

Yorkshire Water worked with Business Modelling Associates, using their SludgeOps

Decision Support Tool, part of their SludgeOptimisation Suite.

38 Water & Sewerage Journal

Developing a market for sludge - the challengeA sludge market has the potential to provide opportunities tooptimise the way sludge is managed, resulting in lower costsfor customers and a more efficient use of resources.

Understanding the scale of the opportunity is critical forcompanies interested in being part of this future sludge market.Existing data and processes hold the key to understanding theopportunity; the challenge is making an optimal decision usingall of this information.

Sludge Optimisation SuiteBusiness Modelling Associates (BMA) combines its leading-edge decision support tool, Enterprise Optimizer®, with waterindustry experience to provide companies with acomprehensive understanding of their options. BMA'sapproach helps companies reduce silos of sludgemanagement, providing a unit cost of your sludge processfrom start to finish, at company, process and site level.

Capable of handling large volumes of data, the SludgeOptimisation Suite optimises across a range of timescales froma weekly sludge production plan, to a strategic view of sludgestrategy and regulatory change. Able to handle OPEX, CAPEXand TOTEX, the Suite provides an end-to-end view of sludgeprocesses and financials in one place. Using advancedanalytics, it cuts through complexity providing teams with clearactions to deliver outperformance.

ExperienceBMA UK has built out decision support tools for a number ofleading companies. The Sludge Optimisation Suite is used byYorkshire Water to support optimised decision making indynamic operational environments; South West Water areutilising the Suite to model the TOTEX impact of regulatorychange over the next 25 years.

BMA is a consulting and solutions development firmspecialising in analytics solutions. Solutions are tailor-made tohelp clients systemically and holistically model their end-to-endoperations, analyse what-if scenarios and explore howpotential changes affect service, costs, investor returns,sustainability and risk.

Contact Business Modelling AssociatesT: +44 (0)1274 792662www.businessmodelling.com

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