A World-Class Gathering of Water Leaders

• Gary made one point abundantly clear: installing a smart meter is not a technical formality. It is a strategic moment of truth — a customer experience touchpoint with the potential to strengthen or undermine brand value. 

Reflections and Lessons Learned

• Strong senior sponsorship is essential  
• Cultural change is slower than technical implementation — and often more emotional.
• Pilots should be followed by strategic pauses — allowing time to absorb, reflect, and scale 
• The original vision was too ambitious — it had to be phased, and that’s not a failure, but wisdom.  

Top Takeaways

• Smart  metering is a data-driven, customer-first utility strategy — not just a  tech upgrade.
• Real  success lies in translating billions of readings into practical, visible  customer value.
• Timely  implementation hinges on internal transformation: from procurement and      warehousing to data governance and customer engagement.
• Open  standards (like NB-IoT) and flexibility in supplier relationships are  essential for long-term resilience.
• The  next challenge is scaling smart operations without losing sight of  inclusivity and user experience.

 Key Takeaways:

• Start before you're ready — perfect systems aren't a pre-requisite for  real-world benefits.
• Design for scale and learning — agile delivery trumps gold-plated planning.
• Customer  co-creation works — employees and their families helped shape a better experience.
• Smart  metering is a business-wide catalyst — forcing improvements in data,      contact, and service.

• Alex delivered a high-level overview of how the water sector can ready itself for large-scale smart meter rollout in AMP8. 
• Alex outlined core delivery risks, including supply chain constraints, workforce gaps, and IT infrastructure limitations. He emphasised the need for proactive planning, regulatory flexibility, and collaborative partnerships across utilities, regulators, and tech providers. Smart metering, he argued, must be integrated with broader network systems to unlock real-time insight, predictive analytics, and eventually autonomous water grids.
• The talk called for industry-wide data standardisation, AI integration, and smarter investment strategies to shift from reactive maintenance to proactive asset management. 

• In a measured and thoughtful presentation, Ehab from Aqaba Water Company gave a rare window into the challenges of deploying smart metering in extreme water-scarce conditions. Jordan is one of the driest countries in the world, and in the city of Aqaba—though lucky to have relatively stable water supply—every drop still counts.
• The project started with urgency and ambition. Yet, as the speaker candidly admitted, early overconfidence in rapid deployment created real difficulties, particularly in training staff to work with new smart meter technologies.  
• NRW reduced by up to 50% in some zones through basic meter upgrades alone.
• DMA  segmentation (from 15 to 42 zones) was critical for control and data integrity.
• Illegal  use remains the #1 challenge—not technical, but behavioural and economic.

• Michaels presentation underscored a critical point: the tech works, but people and process must catch up. United Utilities is investing in cultural transformation as much as infrastructure. Model offices, smart control centres, and proactive demand insight teams are all part of the plan. And to tackle public perception, they’re offering customers a “lowest bill guarantee”—installing meters without enforcing measured charges, unless the customer benefits.  

Key Takeaways

• United  Utilities will install 1 million smart meters in AMP8—up from 180,000 in AMP7.
• Data  volumes will grow from 6 million reads to 9 billion annually.
• Outsourced  delivery model centralises accountability with one provider.
• Smart  meters enable more granular leak detection and targeted customer  engagement.
• The  bigger challenge is cultural: aligning field staff, call centres, and operations to a smart mindset.

•  Emily from Netmore delivered a fast-paced, insightful presentation on smart metering rollout, sharing lessons from their collaboration with Yorkshire Water. Making the case for a “network-first” deployment model—prioritising infrastructure before meters—and championed a clustered installation strategy for maximum efficiency. Emily also acknowledged challenges like logistics, signal issues in deep chambers, and complex stakeholder coordination. She stressed the need to test, adapt, and empower frontline teams while always planning for scale. The talk closed with a call to use metering infrastructure for broader IoT gains—from leakage detection to site security. The session’s Q&A revealed lingering gaps in connectivity, adoption, and customer experience—sparking several new lines of inquiry for future exploration. 

• Faced with water losses of 34% and corrosive soils attacking poorly selected steel pipes, Walla Walla went beyond meter accuracy. They installed towers double the vendor’s recommended height for AMI reads, reaching 95% of their network, and achieved over 99.8% data collection success. Meters were moved to public rights-of-way to clearly separate utility and customer responsibilities  

Key Takeaways

• AMI  can support real-time pressure, flood, sewer, and chemical monitoring—not      just billing.
• High-quality  device management is critical and easily overlooked.
• Investment in infrastructure and staff upskilling pays off.
• Don’t wait for regulators—be brave, vote for your own upgrades.
• Customers  won’t always change behaviour just because they have data.

• The presentation had a two-part structure: first, a tour of smart metering initiatives across Queensland’s councils, and second, a deep dive into an innovative research project on time-of-use (TOU) tariffs from Hervey Bay, a coastal town where David previously led water operations  

Key Takeaways

• Smart  metering enables targeted, data-driven engagement, not just blanket policy tools
• Peak demand is highly concentrated — often solvable through focused behaviour change.
• Local  government-run services need bespoke approaches, not one-size-fits-all  tech.
• Infrastructure savings come from customer partnerships, not just capital investments.

• Rick opened with the candid truth: if you think smart metering is about meters, you’ve already missed the point. Meters are just the gateway. The real value lies in the data, insight, and operational transformation they unlock—if done right.
• In a frank reflection on decades of smart metering deployments, Rick drilled into real-world operational issues: overlooked training, supply chain mishaps, data reliability gaps, field force fatigue, and the critical need for post-installation support. In one cautionary tale, a poorly trained QA team triggered mass alarms just by inspecting meters too eagerly—an “analogue” consequence of a digital deployment.
• He stressed that radio comms are inherently imperfect (expect ~4% failure), which demands robust SLA monitoring, operations centres, and continuous improvement from day one—not “when things go wrong.” Crucially, once go-live happens, the project team disappears. If the organisation hasn’t culturally absorbed the new tools and workflows, failure is just one glitch away.

• There’s nothing quite like having your worldview (and orbit) expanded by someone from the space industry. Rob opened by admitting his mission was clear: to convince attendees that satellite-based LoRaWAN is not only technically feasible, but commercially viable, and more relevant than many in the utility sector realise.

We heard compelling case studies:

• Dubai Electricity & Water Authority, who abandoned their in-house satellite      plan to partner with Lacuna.
• Wales County Council, who replaced bucket-based water quality sampling with      low-cost, satellite-connected sensors.
• Peatland  monitoring in Indonesia, where data on soil moisture enables access to      carbon credits.
• Precision agriculture, the company's core commercial base, where nitrate and water      monitoring optimises fertiliser use.

• With looming EU regulations (Cyber Resilience Act, RED), smart meters are now classed as critical infrastructure. Attackers are watching. One U.S. company lost 3.8 million users because of weak device-cloud authentication. Shahram’s call to action? Let security specialists handle device protection—so water companies can focus on value creation and customer trust.

Key Takeaways

• DIY cybersecurity is a liability
• Outsource device security to experts now
• Regulations are coming fast.