NxtGen "Pitch & Poster" Winner at IAM Annual Conference 2018

The Pitch & Poster session, hosted by NxtGen, is run every year at the IAM Annual Conference. It is an excellent opportunity for newcomers to asset management to show their potential and discuss their work with experienced professionals. Adopting the conference theme for Day 2, this year's Pitch & Poster session looked for entries on Innovation & Transformation.

Alex Grainger, Project Manager (Asset Management) at WYG Management Services Ltd, delivered a winning pitch of his poster, "Economic Data Capture on Highly Regulated Sites", on Day 2 of the IAM Annual Conference 2018.

As winner of the Pitch & Poster session, Alex presented in the closing Plenary session of the day to all delegates of the conference.

His poster focused on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) on a nuclear licensed site - the most regulated site in Europe - to address knowledge deficiencies and data quality gaps.

Alex explained that from a single visit, UAVs make asset information collection affordable, provide accurate, key information to underpin asset management plans, achieve significant cost savings, and further collateral benefits. 

Looking to future applications and developments, Alex talked about the possibilities of using Artificial Intelligence and Digital Twin to auto-detect conditions and make semi-autonomous asset management decisions.

Alex Bailey of Anglian Water also presented an excellent poster titled, "How Anglian Water is making everyone an asset manager".

He focused on the organisational transformation from perceiving asset management as a standalone discipline, to treating it as an integral part of core areas of the organisation.

The session showcased how asset management is being adopted by organisations as a fundamental practice in order to increase efficiency and accuracy, as well as to meet growing customer expectations and operate in a sustainable manner. A strong focus of the presentations was on looking forward and the innovative practices being put in place now to meet future requirements.