2021 Review

“Partnerships are just so critical and there is a way about how we can work together to leverage the strengths and tolerance and ultimately the charge and the mission of different organisations to achieve this greater benefit. It’s a tremendous opportunity that we haven’t leveraged that scale in the water industry.”
Alyson Watson, CEO, WOODARD & CURRAN

“We need to figure out how we can increase our water supply and advocate for a satellite and decentralized plan of sewer systems and stormwater capture that you can treat and have it close to the demand. The biggest cost for us is the cost of conveyance. If we don’t start thinking differently and bringing new technologies to start deploying and putting things close to storage basins or the recycle water systems, it’s going to cost a lot of money.”
Adel Hagekhalil, General Manager, MWD OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

“People need to be open-minded. That group mindset – ‘business as usual’, if we keep on doing what we are doing, we are not going to reach our strategic goals. We have to be able to look at what’s new, what are the new technologies, the new capabilities, how do we adjust?”
Robert Bornhofen, Director – Innovation, DC WATER

“When we look at the water industry it has been rather siloed and fractured. It’s time for collaboration to put our minds and hearts together. And that includes working with the public and private side.”
Stuart Rudick, Founder & CEO, WATER INNOVATION ACCELERATOR

“Two years ago, we set out with a challenge about taking our AI and applying it to tackle the global problem of water loss and leakage. You need to remove human analysis input in that process so humans can have more free time to do complex tasks. To be truly effective, we decided to become non-proprietary and centre agnostic. We can take any audio file from any logger, hydrophone or even a simple FIDO little bug and give you instant accurate leak or no leak, with a 92% accuracy.”
Victoria Edwards, CEO, FIDO

READ MORE ON FIDO’S CLOUD CORRELATION

“We’re working on a project called Operation Next and its purpose is to recycle 100% of the effluent from the largest wastewater treatment facility, which is owned and operated by a different agency that will recycle the water and give it to the LADWP. The goal of this is to take the water that is currently being treated and dumped into the ocean to recycle and advance purified recycle levels and recharge the local groundwater basins. Another strategic goal is to get this water all the way to our infiltration plant and use the water for direct potable reuse to 70% of our service area. This makes us have a sustainable, resilient and reliable system moving forward.”
Anselmo Collins, Sr. Assistant General Manager – Water System, LADWP

“Water conservation and the one water idea are both very important. We need to look into how we manage all of these sources, and it is not something you can start all of a sudden. Water conservation means you have to be able to rely on less revenue because you are actually encouraging customers to buy less of your products. I believe its an integrated system and something that we are hopefully showing the rest of the community and the region that we take this water source very seriously and we lead by example.”
Robert Puente, President & CEO, SAN ANTONIO WATER SYSTEM

“Many utilities have a lot of data and its often sitting in individual locations. The big challenge is aggregating the appropriate data to a system thinking approach. Whatever that data is associated with e.g a pump or chemical dosing. All that data has an individual value, but we have to aggregate that data with a system thinking paradigm.”
Colby Manwaring, CEO, INNOVYZE

“I believe that engineering firms are one piece of the puzzle but collaboration needs to be a meeting of the minds and a meeting of the goals between start-ups, contractors, utilities and end users. And then engineering firms can help build the bridges between all of them but there does need to be a shared trust and a shared mindset.”
Rebecca Birmingham, Ventures Lead, ARUP VENTURES

“We need to be thoughtful about how we use failure. Having empathy and using the drivers such as what’s happening in the process and how we learn from them. We focus on decision quality and making the best decision to go forward and sometimes that’s not the outcome you expected – but it doesn’t mean that you failed.”
Cindy Wallis-Lage, Executive Director and President Water Business, BLACK & VEATCH

Here are just some of the global players and industry leaders who joined us at the virtual World Water-Tech North America Summit in 2021:

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