The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent national lockdowns have had a major impact on the operations of water supply companies. This includes the management of water losses, which is impacted by various elements of utilities’ day-to-day operations, including customer meter reading, leak detection activities, and pressure management.

Additionally, some severe lockdowns have forced factories and businesses to close, meaning a drastic reduction in system demands. This would naturally have an impact on the measurement of water losses in percentages, but what has the real impact been?

We will hear from four utility managers, based in Portugal, Brazil, France and the UK, who will explain how their daily water loss operations have been impacted and what effect there has been on water loss reporting.

Pedro Ramalho will share his teams’ experiences of working under lockdown conditions, and Milene Aguiar will discuss the importance of reporting on performance-based contracts to avoid surprises. Philippe Mappa will then share his observations of decreasing leakage levels and explore some possible reasons why this has happened. Finally, Gareth Paske will share experiences of using digital acoustics, data intelligence, communications and virtual appointments to help manage leakage and demand through the pandemic.

Participants should ideally have a basic understanding of water loss management and reporting.