“Bridging your Gap”

Case Study: Southern WaterSouthern Water aspired to build an integrated voice and data field communication solution that would enable them to dispatch centrally to “the man not the van”; to be fully implemented within 12 months.

Southern Water had a well-established van mounted private mobile radio (PMR) network. Their initial approach to this project was to work with the PMR supplier to enhance this solution. However, this way forward had been rejected as the PMR didn’t fulfil the key business requirement of dispatching “to the man not the van”. In order to reduce depot to site travel time Southern Water wanted to be able to dispatch planned and reactive work directly to their 700 field workers over a field data system. In addition if they were able to receive status updates in real-time back over the same system they could obtain further benefits from more efficient deployment of the field workers.

A requirement was identified for an organisation with a reputation of thinking out of the box to design solutions and a track record of successful delivery. Southern Water approached Hillwalk Ltd to devise a solution, manage the business case through to approval and then to deliver the project.

Having initially validated Southern Water’s commercial expectations, Hillwalk progressed the project by thoroughly investigating alternative technologies and architectures from a technical and commercial perspective. These were then distilled into the architecture that produced a viable business process from both IT and field operations perspectives.

Enterprise Mobility

Delivery Design Build Operate

Specialists in enterprise mobility since the 1990s Hillwalk has been responsible for the design, build and delivery of mobile solutions to over 10,000 field users in the field service and logistics markets.

Being the late 1990s, the proposed design would move Southern Water into the role of industry leader for this type of application as the system would move them away from the security, but also expense, of running their own radio network onto a public cellular network. To fulfil a requirement for an integrated voice and data device the only available option was the Nokia 9110 Communicator.

Hillwalk intensively socialised the proposals with the stakeholders, calling in specialists as required, to address the concerns Southern Water had regarding the innovative approach and use of some consumer technology. It was found that the field workers appreciated being issued with such technology and were looking forward to using it.

A robust business case was then developed and managed through Southern Water’s investment approval process, by Hillwalk, before getting full project and budget sign-off from the board.

A competitive tender process was required to select the key hardware, software and connectivity suppliers. Hillwalk prepared the technical specifications and worked closely with Southern Water’s procurement team to manage the process from EU Official Journal publication to final vendor selection.

The successful suppliers; Telepartner Systems for the server and field device software, Vodafone Corporate for the airtime and device support services along with the other infrastructure suppliers; were then managed by an on-site Hillwalk project team, for an on-time and within budget go-live.

Southern Water’s Financial Director was particularly delighted by the robust business case which stood on real cash savings before accounting for less tangible benefits. The realistic operational budget, which accounted for future enhancement and upgrade costs, attracted particular praise. Further savings were realised when Hillwalk delivered an additional 20% of annual savings, against the approved budget. This was achieved through the adroit structuring of the procurement process into independent work packages that were technically sound and carried the lowest supplier risk.

ABOUT SOUTHERN WATER

Southern Water is one of the largest water and wastewater companies in the South East.

It supplies drinking water to more than one million households and treats and recycles wastewater from nearly two million households.

To learn more visit: www.southernwater.co.uk

ABOUT HILLWALK LTD

Hillwalk Ltd is an independent, end-to-end systems integrator specialising in mobile worker solutions; with a reputation for responding effectively to changing customer requirements.

We can demonstrate over twenty years experience in successfully delivering ground breaking solutions for: utilities, mobile operators and large public and private sector workforces.

To learn more about this and other ground breaking solutions from Hillwalk please contact a member of our sales team.Tel: +44 (0) 1823 240090Email: contact@hillwalk.co.ukWeb: hillwalk.co.uk