- Email: [email protected]
Bridging the gap between water utilities and suppliers of innovative technology: Technology Approval Group
Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2017) 1e3
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro
Note from the field
Bridging the gap between water utilities and suppliers of innovative technology: Technology Approval Group G.I.M. Worm Isle Utilities, Cruquiusweg 1, 2102 LS, Heemstede, The Netherlands
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 10 October 2017 Received in revised form 25 October 2017 Accepted 26 October 2017 Available online xxx
The more forward thinking water and wastewater utilities and industrial water users are contributing actively to the development of innovative technologies. But the basic values of utilities and industries, continuity, limitation of risks, and cost efficiency can be conflicting with the essence of testing and applying innovative technologies, at least on the short term. The Technology Approval Group (TAG) identifies and preselects the most relevant innovative technologies, for over 150 municipal and industrial TAG-members worldwide. Members share risks and costs of testing, thus allowing suppliers of innovations to gain their first references and enter the market. Water utilities and industries, at the same time, need this these technologies to be more efficient, limit environmental impacts, comply with increasingly stringent legislation and meet with the continuously changing customers’ demands and expectations. © 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Keywords: Innovation Innovative technologies Water Wastewater Adoption Utilities Technology approval group
1. Introduction Utilities and industrial water users share the same basic values: they strive for continuity of service, while aiming to limit risks and costs. Typically, they own or manage large, valuable assets and infrastructures. Following the basic values of water companies, often proven technologies are chosen over innovative technologies, because initially innovative technologies may lead to i) discontinuity, because implementation causes interruptions of the existing processes, ii) an increased risk level because of unknown performance, and iii) an investment in a trial that may not be recovered. So why would municipal or industrial water users consider to apply innovative technologies? Why don't we apply the same technologies as we did a century ago? We can identify two types of reasons, firstly, following the basic values, and secondly because of the changes of customer expectations and demands. Regarding the former, innovative technologies often have business cases with attractive or at least acceptable returns on investment. Inevitably, the reliability of these cases is low when the
technology is being introduced and will increase during development, ie. testing, up scaling, testing again and full-scale implementation. It should be noted that in these business cases, benefits could be both financial and non-financial, eg. decrease of fossilcarbon footprint, improvement of water quality, increased customer appreciation, increased safety, compliance with legislation. Regarding the latter, human activities introduce new risks to drinking water sources. It's fair to say that once per decade a new threat or opportunity for water utilities have arisen: salts and metals from mining activities and industries, organic micro pollutants from agriculture, industries and medicinal residuals, and more recently micro- and nanomaterials and the increased attention for energy and nutrient recovery. At the same time, new technologies allow us to measure components in lower concentrations, down to ng/l. Therefore, enabling detection of materials, which may have always been present in the water before we could detect them. Such increased knowledge and awareness gives customers reasons to demand higher quality drinking water, wastewater treatment effluent and surface water.
2. Overview E-mail address: [email protected].
The Technology Approval Group (TAG) facilitates municipal and
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.10.288 0959-6526/© 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Please cite this article in press as: Worm, G.I.M., Bridging the gap between water utilities and suppliers of innovative technology: Technology Approval Group, Journal of Cleaner Production (2017), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.10.288
2
G.I.M. Worm / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2017) 1e3
Fig. 1. The Technology Approval group (TAG) process.
industrial water end-users to adopt innovative technologies in an efficient and controlled way. TAG is a forum that introduces preselected innovative technologies to its prospective clients. The TAG process is shown in Fig. 1. After identification of the TAG-members’ needs and ambitions, every four months a list of the ten most relevant innovative technologies is composed. The technologies are commonly in the Technology Readiness Levels 7, 8 and 9. On the day the TAGmembers meet, the five most voted for suppliers present their innovations, followed by ‘questions and answers’, as shown in Fig. 2. Then the supplier is ushered out of the room to allow the TAGmembers to have a private discussion and to express their opinions. By leaving comments and questions on scorecards, the feedback of the ‘market’ is collected and anonymously fed back to the suppliers. For each introduced technology, project consortia are created with the end-users whose operational needs and ambitions match with the expected capabilities of the technology. These consortia play a crucial role in the development of an innovative technology. A successful trial hosted by one water company and supported and followed by others will create a crucial first reference, that allows effective introduction to other water end-users.
Obviously, sharing the risks and costs of these trials is an advantage for the participating utilities. 3. Achievements & challenges The Technology Approval Group (TAG) was organised for the first time in the United Kingdom in 2005. Today, over 150 water and wastewater utilities and industrial end-users attend TAG worldwide and the number continues to grow. Isle Utilities (Isle), founded in the United Kingdom in 2010, is organising TAG-forums in Australia, the United States, Europe and United Kingdom, the Philippines, and South-Africa. To date, over 1300 technologies have been longlisted, and 940 have been presented by 730 technology suppliers. 4. Ambitions for the future TAG is funded by the end-users, technology can present their technologies free of charge. This allows Isle to be independent and bring forward both technologies introduced by well established companies and start-up. Typically, the membership fee (10e25 kV/
Fig. 2. A supplier of an innovative water technology is introduced to water and wastewater companies in the Australian Technology Approval Group forum.
Please cite this article in press as: Worm, G.I.M., Bridging the gap between water utilities and suppliers of innovative technology: Technology Approval Group, Journal of Cleaner Production (2017), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.10.288
G.I.M. Worm / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2017) 1e3
year range in Europe, price level 2017) will be recovered by saving costs on technology sourcing and by adopting one technology per year that otherwise would not have been on the members’ radar. Less tangible benefits for TAG-members are the networking with mind-like water experts, the benchmarking of expertise and the access to the database with all longlisted technologies. Isle has the ambition to continue accelerating the uptake of innovative water technologies by water end-users, to develop online tools leveraging the database that contains over 1300 technologies, like www.islecatwizard.com, and by providing consultancy services to utilities, industries, technology companies and investors. The model is scalable, in Europe Isle currently serves over 30 utilities and 10 industrial end-users. On the municipal forum, the members are divided over two different rooms during the presentations to facilitate an active discussion for all attendees.
3
source these technologies efficiently, to share risks and costs of testing them, thus helping suppliers of innovative technologies to gain the desired ‘proven technology’ label. The application of innovative technologies not only helps the ‘system’ to become more efficient, to improve water quality, to decrease carbon footprint or support achievement of the objectives of the water and wastewater companies, but also enables leaders of these companies to continue to meet customers' future expectations and demands. Links This link (https://youtu.be/SKCcLgANm0g) shows the introduction of a TAG session for water system experts of the Dutch waterboards organised in cooperation with STOWA. Acknowledgement
5. Conclusions The Isle's Technology Approval Group supports and enables end-users of innovative water and wastewater technologies to
Isle Utilities is a private owned company based in the United Kingdom with offices in Unites States, Australia, Singapore, United Arabic Emirates and The Netherlands.
Please cite this article in press as: Worm, G.I.M., Bridging the gap between water utilities and suppliers of innovative technology: Technology Approval Group, Journal of Cleaner Production (2017), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.10.288
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro
Note from the field
Bridging the gap between water utilities and suppliers of innovative technology: Technology Approval Group G.I.M. Worm Isle Utilities, Cruquiusweg 1, 2102 LS, Heemstede, The Netherlands
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 10 October 2017 Received in revised form 25 October 2017 Accepted 26 October 2017 Available online xxx
The more forward thinking water and wastewater utilities and industrial water users are contributing actively to the development of innovative technologies. But the basic values of utilities and industries, continuity, limitation of risks, and cost efficiency can be conflicting with the essence of testing and applying innovative technologies, at least on the short term. The Technology Approval Group (TAG) identifies and preselects the most relevant innovative technologies, for over 150 municipal and industrial TAG-members worldwide. Members share risks and costs of testing, thus allowing suppliers of innovations to gain their first references and enter the market. Water utilities and industries, at the same time, need this these technologies to be more efficient, limit environmental impacts, comply with increasingly stringent legislation and meet with the continuously changing customers’ demands and expectations. © 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Keywords: Innovation Innovative technologies Water Wastewater Adoption Utilities Technology approval group
1. Introduction Utilities and industrial water users share the same basic values: they strive for continuity of service, while aiming to limit risks and costs. Typically, they own or manage large, valuable assets and infrastructures. Following the basic values of water companies, often proven technologies are chosen over innovative technologies, because initially innovative technologies may lead to i) discontinuity, because implementation causes interruptions of the existing processes, ii) an increased risk level because of unknown performance, and iii) an investment in a trial that may not be recovered. So why would municipal or industrial water users consider to apply innovative technologies? Why don't we apply the same technologies as we did a century ago? We can identify two types of reasons, firstly, following the basic values, and secondly because of the changes of customer expectations and demands. Regarding the former, innovative technologies often have business cases with attractive or at least acceptable returns on investment. Inevitably, the reliability of these cases is low when the
technology is being introduced and will increase during development, ie. testing, up scaling, testing again and full-scale implementation. It should be noted that in these business cases, benefits could be both financial and non-financial, eg. decrease of fossilcarbon footprint, improvement of water quality, increased customer appreciation, increased safety, compliance with legislation. Regarding the latter, human activities introduce new risks to drinking water sources. It's fair to say that once per decade a new threat or opportunity for water utilities have arisen: salts and metals from mining activities and industries, organic micro pollutants from agriculture, industries and medicinal residuals, and more recently micro- and nanomaterials and the increased attention for energy and nutrient recovery. At the same time, new technologies allow us to measure components in lower concentrations, down to ng/l. Therefore, enabling detection of materials, which may have always been present in the water before we could detect them. Such increased knowledge and awareness gives customers reasons to demand higher quality drinking water, wastewater treatment effluent and surface water.
2. Overview E-mail address: [email protected].
The Technology Approval Group (TAG) facilitates municipal and
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.10.288 0959-6526/© 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Please cite this article in press as: Worm, G.I.M., Bridging the gap between water utilities and suppliers of innovative technology: Technology Approval Group, Journal of Cleaner Production (2017), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.10.288
2
G.I.M. Worm / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2017) 1e3
Fig. 1. The Technology Approval group (TAG) process.
industrial water end-users to adopt innovative technologies in an efficient and controlled way. TAG is a forum that introduces preselected innovative technologies to its prospective clients. The TAG process is shown in Fig. 1. After identification of the TAG-members’ needs and ambitions, every four months a list of the ten most relevant innovative technologies is composed. The technologies are commonly in the Technology Readiness Levels 7, 8 and 9. On the day the TAGmembers meet, the five most voted for suppliers present their innovations, followed by ‘questions and answers’, as shown in Fig. 2. Then the supplier is ushered out of the room to allow the TAGmembers to have a private discussion and to express their opinions. By leaving comments and questions on scorecards, the feedback of the ‘market’ is collected and anonymously fed back to the suppliers. For each introduced technology, project consortia are created with the end-users whose operational needs and ambitions match with the expected capabilities of the technology. These consortia play a crucial role in the development of an innovative technology. A successful trial hosted by one water company and supported and followed by others will create a crucial first reference, that allows effective introduction to other water end-users.
Obviously, sharing the risks and costs of these trials is an advantage for the participating utilities. 3. Achievements & challenges The Technology Approval Group (TAG) was organised for the first time in the United Kingdom in 2005. Today, over 150 water and wastewater utilities and industrial end-users attend TAG worldwide and the number continues to grow. Isle Utilities (Isle), founded in the United Kingdom in 2010, is organising TAG-forums in Australia, the United States, Europe and United Kingdom, the Philippines, and South-Africa. To date, over 1300 technologies have been longlisted, and 940 have been presented by 730 technology suppliers. 4. Ambitions for the future TAG is funded by the end-users, technology can present their technologies free of charge. This allows Isle to be independent and bring forward both technologies introduced by well established companies and start-up. Typically, the membership fee (10e25 kV/
Fig. 2. A supplier of an innovative water technology is introduced to water and wastewater companies in the Australian Technology Approval Group forum.
Please cite this article in press as: Worm, G.I.M., Bridging the gap between water utilities and suppliers of innovative technology: Technology Approval Group, Journal of Cleaner Production (2017), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.10.288
G.I.M. Worm / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2017) 1e3
year range in Europe, price level 2017) will be recovered by saving costs on technology sourcing and by adopting one technology per year that otherwise would not have been on the members’ radar. Less tangible benefits for TAG-members are the networking with mind-like water experts, the benchmarking of expertise and the access to the database with all longlisted technologies. Isle has the ambition to continue accelerating the uptake of innovative water technologies by water end-users, to develop online tools leveraging the database that contains over 1300 technologies, like www.islecatwizard.com, and by providing consultancy services to utilities, industries, technology companies and investors. The model is scalable, in Europe Isle currently serves over 30 utilities and 10 industrial end-users. On the municipal forum, the members are divided over two different rooms during the presentations to facilitate an active discussion for all attendees.
3
source these technologies efficiently, to share risks and costs of testing them, thus helping suppliers of innovative technologies to gain the desired ‘proven technology’ label. The application of innovative technologies not only helps the ‘system’ to become more efficient, to improve water quality, to decrease carbon footprint or support achievement of the objectives of the water and wastewater companies, but also enables leaders of these companies to continue to meet customers' future expectations and demands. Links This link (https://youtu.be/SKCcLgANm0g) shows the introduction of a TAG session for water system experts of the Dutch waterboards organised in cooperation with STOWA. Acknowledgement
5. Conclusions The Isle's Technology Approval Group supports and enables end-users of innovative water and wastewater technologies to
Isle Utilities is a private owned company based in the United Kingdom with offices in Unites States, Australia, Singapore, United Arabic Emirates and The Netherlands.
Please cite this article in press as: Worm, G.I.M., Bridging the gap between water utilities and suppliers of innovative technology: Technology Approval Group, Journal of Cleaner Production (2017), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.10.288