The judges praised the project’s ‘utterly transformative’ effect on Aquacheck, whose share value increased by approximately 30% on announcement of the smart meter development. Professor Richard Greene, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Exchange at Manchester Met, said: ‘I am absolutely delighted that we and our partners Aquacheck Engineering have won the Best Knowledge Transfer Partnership Award at the KTP Best of the Best Awards 2020. This kind of highly successful collaboration is why Manchester Met is one of the leading universities in the country for hosting KTPs across science and engineering, health, education and sociology.’
Looking to the future, Bamidele is keen to apply his learnings from the Aquacheck collaboration to new projects. In terms of the impact of the project on the University, he says ‘What we have taken from this is confidence in our abilities. When we started, we just wanted to see what we could do. But we’ve received a lot of recognition, which shows that maybe we were doing something very good.’ In practical terms, there have been immediate benefits: ‘It’s helped us to apply for bigger grants, relating to water and electricity consumption, and how we harness the artificial intelligence in the technology to work in industry. We aim to continue to expand our knowledge and apply it in other utilities. We’re now linking with United Utilities and Severn Trent to see how we can develop our use of smart meter technology further.’
Meanwhile, Aquacheck have since facilitated three more KTPs and two direct industrial research projects in collaboration with Manchester Met, investing over £120k in pure research and creating a new electronics division. Following the smart meter project, they were named Supplier of the Year 2017 by Severn Trent Water, and voted in the top 100 innovation companies in the North of England. They now offer the data provided by the smart meters as a service that will create profitable new revenue streams, helping to future proof the business.
Knowledge gained from this KTP will also bring long-term benefits for students and researchers at Manchester Met, directly informing the content of undergraduate and taught postgraduate programmes in smart technologies, disruptive innovations, IoTs, Industry 4.0 and engineering project management.
At a time when the UK’s water network is under unprecedented pressure, Bamidele’s work has shown that innovative solutions can make a major difference.