Big innovation award for SmartSurvey™
The visionary partnership, Water Partner, has awarded the innovation award as the crowning achievement for the first six years of collaboration. The award has been awarded to LE34’s measurement app SmartSurvey™. We are proud – also on behalf of the collaboration, because useful innovation arises when we combine our ideas and commitment.
01.02.2022
Innovation becomes useful when a new product makes things easier and can be used by many more than those who developed it.
Common goals and forces in the innovation process
The courage to engage in the unknown, the ability to translate the customer’s needs into reality, and the willingness to disrupt their own business for the benefit of something bigger are among the reasons why LE34 received the East Jutland partnership Water Partner’s Innovation Award for the development of the SmartSurvey™ app.
LE34 triumphed over the other eight competing companies, each of which submitted their best innovation contribution under the auspices of Water Partner 1.0 in the period 2016–2021.
“LE34 has tackled the innovation cooperation brilliantly. They have been persistent and maintained a good and positive energy level, and when there has been a breakthrough they have managed to commercialize it so that everyone can use it,” says Karsten Lundbye, innovation manager in Aarhus Water and member of the jury in connection with the award.
Peter Hjortdal, head of department for construction projects, Aarhus Vand
“All parties work together on solutions where we can make it smarter, and if everyone takes an open, trusting and honest approach to the innovation work, the level can be raised significantly. That’s exactly what we’ve experienced in the development of SmartSurvey™”
Karsten Lumbye, head of innovation in Aarhus Vand and member of the jury for the innovation prize
“The beautiful thing is that LE34 disrupts its own business. They make it easy for others to perform some of the classic surveying services they usually earn money from, and they lift the industry while benefiting commercially from it themselves. It’s well spotted and brilliantly visionary of them.”
From cardboard box to app
Water Partner 1.0 is an ambitious partnership between the three East Jutland utilities Aarhus Vand, Favrskov Forsyning and Samn Forsyning and their suppliers. Together with the utilities, 14 different companies form part of a six-year partnership agreement in which the parties are obliged to work closely together.
“SmartSurvey™ was conceived at a workshop where I talked to LE34 about the challenges we face. One of them was that the time from something was done in the field until the data was received and loaded in our grid registration was too long. Together we made a prototype of a cardboard box, and LE34 took it home and put on their thinking cap. Today, it is an app that can significantly optimize workflows,” says Peter Hjortdal, head of department for construction projects at Aarhus Vand.
Innovation benefiting utilities and contractors
With SmartSurvey™, today it’s as easy to collect data with great accuracy about a line in an open pit as it is to record a video with a smartphone. The benefits for utilities and contractors are enormous because after the pipe work they can collect the documentation themselves in the field, refill the pit and re-establish the cover in a single operation. At the same time, they get more information about the pipes than the few points measured with a traditional measurement.
The utility company Novafos also contributed to the development of SmartSurvey™ by testing prototypes of the app and collecting data from thousands of open pits.
Water Partner has opened a new round of six-year framework agreements known as Water Partner 2.0. The focus on digitalization and innovation remains at the centre. LE34 has regained its framework agreement with Aarhus Vand and entered into a new role with Water Partner 2.0 as a coordinator for the creation of a flow of geodata, so that everyone in the partnership has access to up-to-date and complete pipeline data.
Torbjørn Mandahl Pedersen, director for LE34 Utilities
“It’s great to help develop something that adds value to our customers, and it’s great to see how proactive and open both Water Partner, who has created an excellent setup for innovation, and all the other parties have been. Where we previously tried to optimize our own part of a project to make something work across the board, we now collaborate to determine how we can best work together toward a common goal.”
Find out more
Contact us
Torbjørn Mandahl Pedersen
Landinspektør og partner
Forretningschef for Forsyning og GIS
Tlf. +45 8820 8758
tmp@le34.dk