A RESEARCH partnership could help Scottish Water provide more efficient services by monitoring its assets, helping prevent and minimise the impact of breakdowns and potentially benefiting other sectors.

The utility company is working with the University of Strathclyde, and CENSIS, the Scottish Innovation Centre for Sensors and Imaging Systems, to develop software helping identify potential malfunction signals.

CENSIS contributed funding of £50,000 towards the project, which monitors data relating to factors such as temperature, flow, and pressure levels, to indicate that maintenance work might be needed.

This kind of work is currently reactive as comparable software means that users can normally only respond after machines have ground to a halt, which can squeeze resources, cut efficiency and lead to relying on backup equipment.

Scottish Water said the technology will help it to better serve its customers, provide a more efficient service and make sure plant and equipment is meeting suppliers' specifications, for example.

Robert White, water operations north team manager at the publicly-owned company, said: "Prevention is always better than cure, and this piece of technology is going to act as an early warning system for potentially tens of thousands of our assets across the country."

He said planned repairs are usually "significantly" cheaper than replacing the equivalent machine, noting that many of its assets are in remote locations.

"This software has the potential to make proactive maintenance a much easier task," allowing the company to plan its resources more effectively, he added.

Scottish Water will work with the University of Strathclyde's Centre for Intelligent Dynamic Communications at its Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, which focuses on data learning.

Dr Alison Cleary, a senior researcher in the Strathclyde group, highlighted the potential broader reach of the project, which will examine the technology's possible commercialisation.

"The software could be used by almost any business that uses a large number of machines which require maintenance. This is an exciting project that could lead to significant efficiencies and savings for businesses in many sectors," she said.

Ian Reid, chief executive of CENSIS, added that the project shows the benefits of the business and academic worlds uniting. "We're excited to see the results of this initiative and how it can be adapted to other uses," he said.