Extension to Field Service for Above Ground Assets

United Utilities Water Limited (United Utilities) has a requirement to replace its current system for planning, scheduling and otherwise managing field operations for issues arising in relation to United Utilities' portfolio of above ground assets. These above ground assets primary include treatment works, pumping stations and other assets that perform active processes in the management its clean water operations and waste water operations.

As a result, United Utilities have worked with a Technology framework partner to identify and document a comprehensive set of requirements for a replacement system and to map those requirements against systems available in the market. As part of this, consideration was given to alignment to United Utilities' technology strategy, which includes maximising operational efficiencies, reduce technical complexity and risk whilst lowering operating costs by rationalising our technology estate where appropriate.

United Utilities already have a system for planning scheduling and otherwise managing field operations in relation to its below ground assets. These below ground assets primarily include United Utilities' distribution network of water pipes, waste water sewers and associated infrastructure which are typically situated below ground.

This existing system is powered by the "Field Service" platform supplied by and licensed from Salesforce. This consists of core licences to the Field Service system (the Core System) plus a number of associated supplemental "add on" products that are required to deliver a production service (e.g. a support service known as "signature support", a sandbox facility for test purposes and "Audit Field Trail" for system record keeping purposes). This provides an end to end service for managing the promotion of required activities, for work management, scheduling, work execution and mobile management. This is referred to below as the Existing Below Ground Use Case.

Following the output of the technology partner review exercise referred to above, it is intended to award a contract to Salesforce for additional licenses for the Core System, plus the provision of equivalent add-on products and services to those referenced above, plus the provision and licensing of "Agent Force for Field Service" and "Event Monitoring" as further supplemental add-on products. This is referred to below as the Supplemental Above Ground Use Case.

The primary reasons for this proposal are to avoid disproportionate technical difficulties arising from a new system being incompatible and / or different from United Utilities' existing systems environment. In particular expanding United Utilities' current use of the Core System and associated add-ons by adopting it for the Supplemental Above Ground Use Case will achieve this objective because it:

• leverages existing skilled resources, and existing support arrangements both with Salesforce and with 3rd party support providers that are equally applicable to the Existing Below Ground Use Case and the Supplemental Above Ground Use Case;
• aligns with existing system architecture and colleague familiarity (both in-house technical experts and workforce operating across both the Existing Below Ground Use Case and the Supplemental Above Ground Use Case)
• avoids insofar as possible technical and operational complexity and resulting difficulties which would arise from a requirement for UU to integrate with separate external systems to those currently used for the Existing Below Ground Use Case;
• avoids duplicate supplier management that would otherwise be required if we were to adopt a different system to that currently used for the Existing Below Ground Use Case;
• by utilising the same supplier for both process and network assets, it ensures a unified supplier model with one accredited partner responsible for configuration, maintenance, consistent security and change control across operations covering both use cases.