Utilising Digital Technologies in the Water Industry

Hi, I'm Angela Godwin with Water World magazine. Joining me today is my guest, Ralph Exton. He is with Suez Water Technologies. Ralph, thank you so much for joining us today.

Of course. Glad to be here.

So I want to talk a little bit about digital technologies because, you know, a lot of people out there, a lot of industry experts, believe that digitization is going to really have a lot of impact in the water industry. I'm guessing you agree with that.

I certainly agree with that. Can you tell me why? I've been talking about it for a few years now, so it's one of my favorite subjects. And I look at it this way. I think for quite a while, a number of companies that were sort of on the leading edge of the digitization in water were more pushing it. We were talking about, look, these are the benefits. This is why you should do it. Here's how it can benefit you, et cetera, et cetera. But now I think we're sort of turning the corner, and it's more of a pull both from a industrial and a municipal standpoint. Now we're starting to feel them come to us and come to other technology providers and people that have digital solutions. They're saying, hey, we need that. And so it's great to see this happening. I don't think we're fully there yet, but we're starting to feel the transition take place. And so it's very exciting.

Excellent. So one of the areas where it's sort of assumed that digitization is really going to have an impact is on plant operations, Utility operations. What do you say about that?

So I think that's where most of this started, mostly around plant operations, whether that be in the industrial space or in the municipal space. And it was usually focused around how does a particular application perform. And so the advent of asset performance management really grew out of that. You know, how do you take a particular unit operation of water purification and really optimize it by measuring various pieces and parts of it, looking at trend lines, trying to predict what's going to happen, and things like that. So the advent of asset performance management really came out of that. But that's been around for a while, and there's companies that do it very, very well. And it has benefited both industries and municipalities alike down at the unit operations standpoint. But I think the evolution is happening as we speak in terms of going from that unit operation to a full operation, looking at the plant from the very beginning, headworks of the plant all the way to the end. And particularly it's so incredibly important as water reuse becomes an important part of the equation. Because there's a lot more skepticism around water reuse in terms of can we really reuse this water the way we want to, Whether that be for a potable or an indirect potable standpoint or in an industrial application. There's always skepticism around, well, is the water really clean enough to use it again? But with using digital technologies, sensors, controllers, being able to measure down to the very, very lowest levels, but then tying it all together with asset performance management, as well as things like artificial intelligence, advanced algorithms, you get that comfort level that you otherwise would not have had, particularly in like a water reuse type of scenario. Right.

So before I let you go, you know, with people out there that how is the adoption? You know, you talked a little bit about sort of that push to pull. Kind of still have a long way to go. You think so? Or like, what's the status?

You know, I'd love to say we don't have very long to go and we're here. I think we do have a ways to go, but for two reasons. One part of that has to do with the adoption curve. Not everybody's adopting it everywhere, but it's picking up. The other part is the technology is evolving so quickly in this space, whether it be software, whether it be edge type hardware, whether it be sensors, devices, controllers, there's so much going on that technology is shifting so fast and things are getting so much better that you have this adoption curve scenario. Whereas some people are like, this is great, I want it now because I see the benefit. But you also have the other side of the coin that people are saying, wow, because technology is moving so quickly, I'm a little reluctant to jump in right now. I'm going to wait until it gets just a little bit better, which is an odd scenario, but it's a great time to be doing what we're doing here and to be sort of part of that, you know, as it evolves and as it gets adopted and as things shift and change.

Excellent. Well, you've always been a champion of the digital technology, so we wish you all the best of luck with that going forward.

Thank you very much for joining us.

And for Waterworld magazine, I'm Angela Godwin.