CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS 2024 – conference report

27 June 2024

CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS – the first original conference of WES and Partners, opening the new series, took place on June 5-7, 2024 in the beautiful scenery of the Lipowy Most hotel located on the edge of the Knyszyn Forest. A total of 100 people came to the event venue – representatives of water supply and municipal companies, municipal and city offices, scientists and companies serving the water and sewage industry.

In line with the title of the event, this year’s speakers placed emphasis on highlighting the challenges currently facing the water and sewage industry and presenting solutions that respond to them. Many examples of implementations from the practice of solution providers, water and sewage companies and from the world of science were presented.

Beata Wiśniewska – President of Białystok Waterworks – Honorary Host of the conference, talked about the challenges related to financing investments in water supply companies. The President referred to her many years of experience in managing, implementing and settling European and national projects while performing management functions, including: at the Marshal’s Office of the Podlaskie Voivodeship and at the Białystok Waterworks. The spectrum of possibilities for financing water and sewage projects from EU funds turns out to be very wide – from nationwide, through regional, to cross-border programs.

After three difficult years of underinvestment, the water and sewage industry faces great challenges. The largest of them is the implementation of four directives: the drinking water directive, the cybersecurity directive, the directive related to the resilience of critical infrastructure and the update of the waste water directive. These are challenges for which we need huge amounts of money, therefore my speech concerns the possibility of co-financing investments from external sources, such as EU funds.

Beata Wiśniewska – President, Białystok Waterworks

Paweł Sikorski – President of the Chamber of Commerce “Polish Waterworks” – Honorary Patron of the conference, summarized the current and future challenges the industry faces through the extensive activities of the Chamber, including: economic and technical surveys that are the basis for benchmarking reports.

The example of this conference shows that it is worth to meet. The value is that we can listen to speeches, lectures, ask questions, share experiences – both what worked and what did not work. And this is what distinguishes the water and sewage industry – the fact that we share, meet, consult and talk.

Paweł Sikorski – President, Chamber of Commerce “Polish Waterworks”

In turn, Janusz and Jerzy Topolscy – experts from the PPJT Topolski Design Studio, raised the topic of challenges in the field of energy consumption by water and sewage companies. They proposed renewable energy solutions and possibilities of storing electricity generated by renewable sources.

Marcin Kucharski, Product Manager at vonRoll hydro, talked about constant acoustic monitoring as a support for zoning the water supply network. He presented the theoretical background and benefits of the synergy of acoustic monitoring and zoning areas.

Zbigniew Sierdziński – President of KartGIS and Adam Niedośpiał – Commercial Director – presented numerous case studies using GIS tools in water and sewage enterprises and GIS integration with areas such as network model, water meter reading, SCADA, zone monitoring.

I recommend – a wonderful place, people and knowledgeable lecturers.

Iwona Pietrzak – Internal control specialist, Olsztyn Waterworks

Łukasz Wysocki – Head of the Network Modeling Department at WES, opened his speech with a question – if it is possible to detect failures from behind the desk? By showing, as it were, “behind-the-scenes” the process of calculating similarity measures, he pointed out how the hydraulic model shows the reactions of the water supply network to leaks, which can be done without field visits.

The session devoted to water meter management and water meter reading was started by PhD Eng. Piotr Tuz – Commercial Director at WES. He presented methods of selecting measuring devices for facilities with various types of use, with emphasis on optimizing the diameters of water meters. Based on examples of ongoing projects, he indicated the financial values to be recovered by the water and sewage company, using several steps and proven methods.

Mirosław Rząsa and Andrzej Musiał – Sales Managers at ITRON, showed the possibilities of introducing IoT solutions in an evolutionary way, e.g. a gradual and planned transition from a mobile water meter reading system to a stationary one.

At the conference, I learned about new solutions that can be implemented in my company and exchanged experiences with other users

Tomasz Paluch -Head of the Maintenance Department, Tarnowskie Góry Waterworks

The topic of IoT was continued by Piotr Guziewicz – Director of the Network Planning and Service Development Office, together with Michał Łopucki – Key Account Manager at Emitel. They described the next stages of the process of building a LoRaWAN network and exemplary project implementations in the area of the Internet of Things, not only for the water and sewage industry.

Finally, foreign guests – Tulay Gunenc – responsible for International Relations and Sherif Tahirovic – Chief Product Officer for Aircom and International Sales Specialist at MANAS (Turkey) presented the resources and experience of MANAS in the field of utility metering and implementation of stationary systems.

WES completed an amazing task – it organized a very good conference and we learned what we were interested in. For me, the most important thing at conferences is contacts with people, getting to know them and talking directly. You can read a lot of things from literature, folders, and the Internet, but many details are only learned during backroom conversations. Lectures must be short and concise, but subsequent detailed discussion of the topic with the speaker is very valuable and only then do we acquire full knowledge. Since I am an engineer, all the topics presented here interest me. However, I came here for knowledge in the field of mobile and stationary readings and I learned almost everything. I have already determined which direction the Lublin waterworks could go.

Krzysztof Marczuk – Head of the Water and Wastewater Metering Department, Lublin Waterworks

The first day ended with a regional feast with dancing to the traditional music of the Podlasie band Batareja.

The second day began with a meeting with Orthodox mysticism. The participants visited the Museum of Icons and the Orthodox Monastery in nearby Supraśl. In the museum, they had the opportunity to admire approximately 300 icons, sacred objects and frescoes, many of which were icons detained by customs officers during attempts to smuggle them to Poland from across the eastern border. However, the carefully rebuilt and restored Monastery – especially the defensive church – delighted visitors with its architecture and iconography derived from the Byzantine circle of Balkan culture in the mid-16th century.

The lecture part of the day was opened by Bartosz Stasiak – Senior Marketing and Sales Specialist at ABB, presenting selected applications of ABB solutions in reducing water losses, supported by examples of overcame challenges, e.g. regarding unusual installation locations of flow meters.

Daniel Kozłowski – Regional Manager at the AKWA Industrial Fittings Production Plant, talked about the impact of fittings on the network maintenance costs and pointed to important technical aspects of production, security and certification of fittings products.

Olgierd Wargowski – INFRAPORT Product Owner at vonRoll Infratec PL, returned to the topic of leak detection, which was open on the first day of the conference. He drew attention to the technological changes that have occurred in this area with the emergence of IoT solutions.

Białystok University of Technology was represented by professor Katarzyna Ignatowicz and professor Wojciech Dąbrowski. On behalf of his research team, prof. Dąbrowski presented the results of work on an innovative project for recovering water from sewage in municipal treatment plants. He identified effective initiatives in this area around the world and presented his own research systems for planned basic research in laboratory and real conditions.

We deal with the recovery of water from treated sewage. We wonder whether this process is worth pursuing. It’s probably worth it, because it is used in many countries – especially in countries where there is a lot of water stress and there is little water, such as Spain or the United States. We offer simple and cheap solutions – these are the only solutions we can offer to small sewage treatment plants. Reclaimed water can be used, for example, for irrigation, in the circular economy, and even to produce beer, as in the USA. However, there must be consent and financing for such projects to be launched. Therefore, our preliminary research is intended to make it clear that this problem is worth addressing.

Ph.D. engineer Wojciech Dąbrowski, prof. Białystok University of Technology

Artur Zajkowski – Network modeling specialist at WES, encouraged the use of a broader approach to the implementation of projects in the area of water and sewage management. Using the example of several completed projects, he showed how extending the ordering party’s original assumptions protected the water and sewage company from serious technical and financial consequences.

The conference was summed up by Waldemar Joniec – Editor-in-Chief of Rynek Instalacyjny magazine – Media Patron of the conference, drawing attention to the current trends in the water and sewage industry, which were also reflected at our event: circular economy, Smart City, Smart Home and Big Data and IoT. He presented the trends in scientific publications, research trends in Poland and around the world, and groups of issues subject to analysis and research.

We are at a conference where the water and sewage industry discusses the challenges posed by new technologies. We discuss how to meet these challenges among designers, operators and local governments that manage water and sewage networks. The topic implies many new issues that require financial resources. There are a lot of these funds, but they need to be looked for intensively, not only in plans and programs intended for the industry, but also in areas such as renewable energy. We need to find resources, otherwise tariffs would increase dramatically, which would severely affect all of us as consumers. During this event, we are considering how to address this.

Waldemar Joniec – Editor-in-Chief of Rynek Instalacyjny magazine

The lecture part ended with thanks and a drawing of surprises from media patrons and organizers.

The conference ended with a dinner with a performance by the blues band “Po 50-ce”.

Thank you very much for participating in our event. We will be very pleased to meet you at the next meetings.

Such an event is an opportunity for us to meet many interesting people from the industry and hear about many different challenges that are also known to us. The speech of the President of the Białystok Waterworks was very lively, current and interesting. We will be able to use a lot of what we had the opportunity to hear over these two days and we will be happy to participate in such an event again.

Weronika Grelik – Chief specialist of the Department of Municipal Engineering in the Infrastructure Office, Warsaw City Hall