Domestic Water Saving Audits

Description

Northumbrian Water Group has set itself challenging targets to achieve real and quantifiable water savings through its water efficiency strategy in order to reach a long-term goal of 118 litres per person per day by 2040 and a 5.3% reduction between 2020 and 2025. Water saving visits have been a key component of our water efficiency strategy. The tried and tested approach successfully combines the provision and fitting of water saving products in customer's homes with effective engagement with each customer. This approach has proven to deliver long-term behaviour change. Every Drop Counts is our multi award winning water saving visit project. We are seeking contractors to tender for services to deliver the next iteration of Every Drop Counts. We are seeking to employ a contractor to deliver Every Drop Counts to customers across our Northern, Essex and Suffolk supply areas for the rest of AMP7 period . The contract will run for an initial period of 15 month period ( This includes a 12 month project delivery period and a 3 month buffer period where any remedial or outstanding work can be completed), extendable for a year on an annual basis, for three years to 2025. The regulatory year runs from April to March with a requirement to report activity completed to regulators covering this period every year. The objective is to provide validated data on the details of the work completed annually so that this data can be analysed and used for NWG's annual reporting. The project for the first year of the contract will be completed by January 2023 including a period for review of the final report and database by NWG, followed by any required amendments and clarification. The services to be provided must include the following; •Inbound and outbound call handling •Arranging appointments •Organise/plan technician routes/diaries around appointments •Organise/facilitate the transfer, storage and monitoring of stock •Gaining an understanding of customers, who they are and how/why/when water is used the way it is •Engaging with customer through relevant behavioural change messaging, making the interaction personal and tailored to the customer •Delivery and installation of suitable water saving interventions, taking flow measurements, and substituting alternative products where appropriate as part of the visit, •Minor internal leak repairs (such as leaky loos, tap washer replacements etc.) •Remedial visits, •Monitoring call centre and field staff productivity, •Robust and quality assured data collection, for example collecting data from visit around products installed, meter reads, any other areas of interest, on an electronic form •Reporting, weekly report of work complete; and final project review report •Collection of water consumption data to assess water savings. •Post intervention customer survey and follow ups •Quality assurance random sampling •Providing feedback and recommendations of improvement prior to review phase. It is estimated that approximately 57,500 letters will be sent to achieve the target of 5750 audits for the project. Call centre volume and related data administration will be high during this period of initial recruitment. It is critical that all information relevant to this project and our customers are held securely and separate to any other clients information on a unique database. The contractor is responsible for designing this database, while we request that NWL retains the intellectual property rights. We also stipulate that NWL is responsible for all PR releases relating to this project. Plumbers are to be qualified to NVQ Level 2, plumbing tradesmen and registered under the National Water Hygiene Car Scheme or hold existingBlue Cards. Reporting is required weekly and should cover analysis of data and work completed (take up rate, product installation rates etc.) Contract start date - 1st January 2022 Lot 1: The Challenge At NWG, we have set out fourteen ambitious goals that will have a fundamental impact on the way our customers experience their water and wastewater services in future. One of these goals is to reach a PCC (per capita consumption) target of 118 litres per person per day (l/p/d) by 2040. The current PCC for our NW operating area is 144 litres per person per day (l/p/day), and 155 l/p/d for our ESW operating area. Our company average PCC is 148 l/p/d, which means we are looking to save 30 l/p/d by 2040. Our Plan also references the need to empower our customers to engage with us on water efficiency. Background Every Drop Counts (EDC) is NWGs award-wining water saving campaign. Through this campaign we have engaged with more than 18,200 households in eight towns since 2016. As part of EDC, we offer our customers a free water saving home visit. These are plumber led home water and energy retrofit visits designed to facilitate face to face interactions with customers and conversations about using water wisely, whilst carrying out installations and/or supply of water saving devices. As well as our water saving visits, during EDC we engage with local communities through events and stalls, and we target local schools previously with our Super Splash Heroes plays and workshops. Alongside this we have extensive marketing and social media campaigns which include the likes of billboards, radio ads and Spotify advertising all aimed at increasing participation within the target area. We've had great success with EDC over the years, with our water saving visits saving on average 22 litres per property per day. We offer all customers within our campaign target areas a water saving visit under EDC, no matter how much water they are using, whether they are already efficient or perhaps haven't considered water saving before, and no matter their situation. Our Approach In previous phases of EDC, we have aimed to achieve maximum water savings by installing as many (suitable) water saving products as possible at each visit. Our contractors have deployed plumbers to carry out a water audit of customers home, installing water saving retrofit devices and products, fixing minor leaks and engaging with customers to deliver behaviour change messaging. This approach can be considered a one size fits all approach, where each customer is offered the same water saving interventions and given roughly the same advice. A New Approach We have considered what is meant by 'average PCC' when thinking about achieving our ambitious goal and have looked at how we can maximise the impact of our water saving projects to achieve higher, more sustained savings. These are our thoughts and what we have determined through a deep dive into existing data: • 'Average' PCC doesn't really exist • Upon analysis, it's clear that the 'mean' PCC does not reflect the majority of our customers • There is a significant number of customers who are using considerable amounts of water • These highest users in fact drag the average (mean) PCC number up (away from the mode) • There is a larger capacity for water savings in the highest users Taking these findings into account, we'd like to approach Every Drop Counts differently, targeting the Top 5% of our customers based on their consumption. Targeting these customers specifically, requires a new approach, with potentially a new or different water saving intervention(s) and a more bespoke educational interaction, overall creating a more meaningful, impactful water saving home visit for our customers in the Top 5%. Behaviour Change While elements of this project will require some technical ability, we are looking to shift the emphasis into the behavioural change arena. Everything we know about delivering successful water efficiency programs tells us that effective customer engagement is absolutely fundamental to delivering sustainable behaviour change and achieving water savings. This project presents the chance to gain a deeper understanding of our customers and how and why they use water. By taking a more targeted approach and making each interaction bespoke to each customer, we hope to promote a more effective and successful water saving campaign. To illustrate, we're looking at quality over quantity: A water saving home visit that is completed within 30-45 minutes, where the technician installs the maximum amount of water saving products available, would be classed as a successful visit within our previous approach. Looking forward and approaching the visit from the new angle, we would question whether each of the devices installed where suitable for the customer/household, whether the technician has gained an understanding of the customer/household and whether they have offered the most suitable solution to tackle high use for that customer/household. There may be a middle ground between the technical aspects of a home water savings visit, and the behavioural and interactional aspects of a visit, and this middle ground may shift from customer to customer, therefore a judgement is to be made upon each visit carried out. We have considered whether a qualified plumber or technician might be the right candidate for this task, where technical skills are certain but behavioural skills may be lacking.