Northumbrian Water’s week-long NWG Innovation Festival, which took approximately 1,000 individuals, including delegates, from across the globe to the North East has been praised as playing a pivotal role in delivering future industry improvements and developments.

The Innovation Festival, which took place over five days at Newcastle Racecourse, was held in order to find new innovative methods of tackling important issues that affect us everyone – challenges such as leakage, 21st century infrastructure, flooding, mobile working, green cities, and working in 2030.

Microsoft, Ordnance Survey, IBM, BT, CGI Group and Reece Innovation were amongst some of the world’s biggest names in business that have been leading the ideas hunt, and after looking at the challenges all week, hundreds of proposed ideas were stream lined to produce the 18 key projects that can be taken forward and developed.

Ideas presented at the end of the NWG Innovation Festival included:

  • ‘21st Century Reach’: How can we optimise a mobile workforce for a complex network business? Led by headline sponsor BT;
  • ‘How Green is Your City?’: What can businesses do to improve the environment in the North East? Led by headline sponsor Ordnance Survey;
  • ‘Keep It Flowing’: What do we know about leakage from water pipes and how can we fix it? Led by NWG, alongside a Microsoft-led Hackathon of data relating to leakage;
  • ‘Preparing for the Future’: How do we upgrade our infrastructure for the 21st Century effectively and affordably? Led by headline sponsor Reece Innovation;
  • ‘Rain, Hail or Shine’: How can we reduce flooding? Led by headline sponsor IBM; and
  • ‘Tomorrow’s World’: What will living and working look like in 2030? Led by headline sponsor CGI

Heidi Mottram, Chief Executive of Northumbrian Water, said: “The amount of time you spend tackling problems over the course of the year adds up to a lot of working hours. The NWG Innovation Festival has enabled us to achieve that in five days.

“We’ve heard about some very impressive developments that have come out of the work that has been taking place at the NWG Innovation Festival and it will continue when we all return to work on Monday.

“There is a lot of hard work still to be done in delivering these ideas but we are convinced that the spirit of collaboration and innovation will continue long after the festival has closed, because these are important issues that deserve the continued focus of all involved.”

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