FlowWorks Team Makes a Splash at the WaPUG Autumn Conference

The FlowWorks team is home after a successful trip to the United Kingdom for the Wastewater Planning Users Group (WaPUG) conference.

The primary topic for discussion during the two-day wastewater and urban drainage event in Blackpool was “What does the future hold—the next five years.”

FlowWorks President Timothy Hicks flew into the UK a few days ahead of time for meetings and to attend the Water, Wastewater and Environmental Monitoring (WWEM) tradeshow in Telford before picking up FlowWorks Operations Manager Craig Kipkie at the Manchester Airport. The English roads made for adventure as the two missed the turn onto the M6 and found themselves traversing the rural roads of the Wirral. After some hasty map reading, they made it through the Mersey Tunnel and onto the streets of Liverpool, where they were able to locate an excellent pub set against the back wall of Goodison park. Once they were fed, it made for a fun and scenic excursion, Hicks said.

Safe and sound in Blackpool, the FlowWorks team met up with colleagues from Detectronic and IETG, owned by ADS, the firm’s partner in the Seattle Public Utilities Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) project. There was much discussion about upcoming projects and plans for using FlowWorks.

Hicks and Kipkie led numerous demonstrations, including what was easily the largest demonstration of the show Thursday evening when they shared online data, live via the FlowWorks site, to a crowd of about 20. The team continued to offer demonstrations and answer questions even as the show was being cleaned up around them on the last day.

Craig Kipkie demonstrates how to use FlowWorks data analysis tools on live field data.

The team also spent time with Detectronic and IETG folks, teaching them the inner workings of the FlowWorks platform—so much so that both firms have been designated as FlowWorks Technical Experts since they now possess a depth of knowledge about the tools and how to effectively employ them.

“All in all, it was a fabulous trade show,” Hicks said. “Three days of really good conference.”

The tradeshow was a unique opportunity to connect with the UK market. The market is highly sophisticated, since the level of modeling going on nationwide is uniformly high and very different from that of the United States because it is operated by ten large, privatized water boards. The result is that all firms in the industry are working ultimately for one or more of the ten water boards.

Craig Kipkie of FlowWorks and Ian Small of Mott MacDonald discuss the details of FlowWorks CSO management tools.

Hicks highlighted plenty of positives, weather aside, and thoroughly enjoyed the trip, he said,

“We had a really great show and met exactly the people we needed to meet and had great conversations and demonstrations with many of them. The people were awesome, the food was great, the venue was good for the purpose, Blackpool was marginally acceptable and the weather was awful. Short of fixing the weather and attracting so many more of the RIGHT kind of attendees that the event outgrows Blackpool, I am not sure the organizers could have done anything more”

Look for FlowWorks at the WaPUG Conference again next year.