As the regulatory requirements have evolved over the years, United Utilities, as other utilities has invested in a number of IT systems to make operational and planning improvements and efficiencies. IT implementations are notoriously difficult to implement and often do not realise the intended benefits, or get used as much as expected.
We have worked with United Utilities, Over several years, supporting the implementation of many IT systems. Our involvement has covered many different types of support. We have project managed vendor implementations, we have managed in-house development teams, and we have developed and implemented bespoke solutions. The systems that we have been involved with have covered operations, customer services and asset management. For example:
We have also supported United Utilities to develop a suite of cost estimating tools over a period of twenty years. This has been a major investment, with many improvements over time and which now covers all areas of Capex and Opex across the business and all areas of planning and delivery. Our involvement has varied over this time. We have developed some elements of the system, but in generally, our role has been to project manage the in-house developments.
Our projects have been delivered successfully. We are particularly proud of our involvement with the cost estimating system, which has been well recognised in the industry:
“United Utilities’ IPES cost system is one of the most impressive tools that we have seen in the utilities sector and in developing this system, United Utilities have taken a leading market position in addressing that the management of base cost data into effective cost knowledge is a critical business performance issue”, Peter Valkenburg, EC Harris.
