Brabant Water supplies drinking water to more than 2.5 million residents and businesses in the Dutch province of North Brabant. The Distribution division is responsible for the installation and management of the water supply pipelines.
Challenge
To Brabant Water, the condition of its water network is essential knowledge. The water supplier is always open to new inspection methods that offer even better, more up-to-date information on the condition of its water network.
Solution
The Pipe Scanner. An inspection tool that allows your own technicians to perform external condition assessments of AC and cast iron pipelines in a flash.
Brabant Water launching customer
Under the ground in North Brabant are 18,000 km of pipelines that supply all the residents with drinking water of excellent quality. This network is vital to the reliable supply of drinking water.
To Brabant Water, the condition of its water network is essential knowledge, allowing pipelines to be replaced at the right time. Where are the risks highest? What locations are more likely to sustain damage? And what pipelines should still be good for a while? Jan Snel, Advisor Distribution Advice: ‘Brabant Water is always open to new inspection methods or partnerships that offer us even better, more up-to-date information about the pipelines we manage.’
Development of the Pipe Scanner
Acquaint developed the Pipe Scanner as part of the collaboration with Brabant Water. This inspection tool is compact, user-friendly and can perform external pipeline inspections. A major advantage of the Pipe Scanner is that your own technicians can assess a pipeline’s condition at any time. The Pipe Scanner transmits measurement data to Acqaint’s Cloud Environment, where this is accessible through the Dashboard. The data is analysed within a day and made available to Brabant Water through that same dashboard.
Declaration of intent
In March 2020 Acquaint and Brabant Water signed a letter of intent regarding the Pipe Scanner’s use and continued development. After a period of testing and validation, the Pipe Scanner is now ready for the real thing. In the context of the agreement, Acquaint trained several technicians on how to use the Pipe Scanner in August. Brabant Water has now started working with the Pipe Scanner.
The provided reports allow us to estimate the condition of the inspected pipework.
Results
Condition assessment by your own technicians
Jan Snel: ‘We appreciate the Do It Yourself concept, as it allows us to perform scheduled or unscheduled condition assessments on the spot. Our technicians’ initial experiences are positive; the Pipe Scanner is easy and intuitive to use. Furthermore, the condition assessments offer us rapid insight. I can download measurement results through the Acquaint dashboard. Based on these reports, we gain insight into the state of our pipelines.’
Major step
Launching customer Brabant Water has been using the Pipe Scanner in the field since September 2020. This makes Brabant Water the first client to work with this technology. The letter of intent was an important step forward in the adoption of the Pipe Scanner. Naturally Acquaint and Brabant Water will continue the development of the Pipe Scanner.
The innovation fund scheme of the Municipality of Leeuwarden for the subsidy project ‘Cloud environment inspection data’ enables us to innovate further with regard to the development of our inspection tools to collect cloud data. More information can be found here: https://www.leeuwarden.nl/nl/innovatiefond
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