The short version
- Initial equipment purchase and installation is easier to fund than a maintenance programme to provide sustained measurement quality, and we think that is the main reason monitoring programmes disappoint.
- Analysis of data to identify sensor performance is vital as unrecognised deterioration in measurement quality can lead to poor decisions.
- Install location, configuration changes and calibration history are held with the timestamped data in Clamnet.
- Data is readily portable from our Clamnet platform into SCADA, analytics environments and digital twins.
Useful monitoring depends on representative installation, maintained instruments and a clear account of measurement quality. Programme planning should define site access, calibration and servicing, responsibility for reviewing alerts, and the records needed to interpret results later.
Measurement integrity
Every parameter at every site should have a documented purpose, an expected range and a required response. Installation should be to a standard that makes the reading representative of the main rather than of the connection. Calibration should be traceable to reference methods with stated acceptance limits. Sensor-health diagnostics should distinguish probable instrument failure from a plausible water-quality change — the two look similar and are acted on very differently. And data that is missing, substituted or out of calibration should be flagged rather than silently presented as verified observation.
The most common technical objection to distribution monitoring is that the instrument measures water standing in the connection rather than water moving in the main. It is a fair objection. The Clam devices use a patented flushing control that clears the sample path before each measurement, so what is recorded is water from the main. Sensors are on an annual service interval, and the batteries in the residual instruments are sized to run between services. The Clamnet portal holds the measurement and the configuration history together, on the basis that a trace on its own is not evidence.
The service model
A monitoring programme should be planned as a measurement service, not a purchase of instruments and connectivity. That means access arrangements, spares, field competence, response times and safe isolation — the unglamorous half of the programme, and the half that determines whether year three of the record is as good as year one.
Instruments connect through a hydrant or tapping point. All configurations can be installed without civils or an external power supply, so a location can be instrumented, moved or recovered without a construction exercise — which matters for maintenance as much as for deployment. We can help you plan the programme as a whole to maximise success with your delivery team or partner.
Deployment record
Intelisys was one of ten partners in Water Quality as a Service — Treatment 2 Tap, an Ofwat Innovation Fund project led by Northumbrian Water with Siemens, the University of Sheffield and five water companies, completed in October 2025. The project record is published by Ofwat.
The programme set out to demonstrate a step-change in the management of water quality for customers, deploying what it described as Europe’s largest integrated network of water quality sensors and analytics software, and establishing how the resulting insight is integrated into operations across a five-company consortium. Intelisys provided a fleet of HydraClam4+Cl units. It completed in October 2025.
