25-Jan 2010: Aqua Environmental recently had two representives in London attending the 2010 Global Leakage Summit.

This is the 4th Global Water Leakage Summit since 2006 – the Summits have become more and more popular with delegates, attracting a wide audience of utility managers, consultants, contractors and equipment suppliers.

These conferences have set a benchmark for:

• High quality presentations on leakage management.
• Knowledgeable and experienced high-level speakers.
• Dissemination of the current ‘hot topics’ and innovative methodologies.
• Collecting a worldwide audience of leading water utility practitioners.

As always, the program was structured to reflect what delegates want to hear – based on a thorough analysis of delegate research.

Reflecting the mood of the industry, there wasa big emphasis on innovation and new technologies at this Summit. The theme for 2010 was ‘Comparing Results On The Application Of Evolving Methodologies & Emerging Technologies For Water Leakage Reduction’.

The program focused on innovation and new technologies, a topic which the team here at Aqua Environmental is very interested about and further exploring.

One of the highlights of the event were the high level panel discussions at the start of the conference between utility CEO’s, MD’s and Regulators, who discussed the fast rate of change in the water industry and the future focus for investment, particularly in relation to operational strategies and value for money.

Other issues that were covered by the program were:

• Justifying pipe renewal projects;
• Best leakage management practices for dense urban areas;
• Effectiveness of the latest pressure management technologies;
• Technologies for finding leaks in ‘difficult’ situations;
• A focus on plastic pipes, and the associated questions – longevity, metallic vs. plastic and problems of finding leaks in them.

There was the usual stellar cast of speakers, including CEO’s, senior directors and managers and regulators of major international utilities in Brazil, Uganda, Abu Dhabi, China, Australia, USA, Canada and Malaysia as well as from UK and other European utilities.

Aqua Environmental were the only leakage service providers from Australia and New Zealand present at the Global Leakage Summit. We have strengthened our relationships with some key equipment manufactures and explored new technologies which we will look to implement into our current activities in the near future.

During our time in the UK we were able to visit United Utilities Leakage Team in Manchester. We discussed the nature of leakage works in the UK and Australia and talked about differences between both regions. We learnt a lot from this visit and will be implementing some new procedures in near future as a result of this visit.

If you want to discuss any particular aspect of the Summit or would like to see some presentations please contact Hugh Chapman – 1800 264 262.