Project Summary
Gaining consent from public and private landowners to dig up their ground and install network equipment presents a huge challenge to network operators. When a customer wants to connect to our network or operational works are required, delays in securing consent from landowners is a blocker, causing frustration to all.
Wayl-ease seeks to create a transparent, but secure, external-facing record of consents and link network operators and landowners via an online engagement and digital payment platform. By automating manual processes and giving customers visibility of the consent progress, Wayl-ease will facilitate improved planning, faster network transformation and more informed customers.
Innovation Justification
Wayl-ease aims to transform the management of wayleave agreements, creating an industry first digital tool and engagement platform. This innovative solution will enable proactive consent management between networks and landowners adding self-serve functionality for landowners to assess wayleaves and receive digital payments. Once proven successful, it could serve as a platform for all utilities that face this common problem.
UKPN have already linked ownership of land and property records held by the HM Land Registry with existing infrastructure and wayleave agreement records. The ambition now is to develop a digital solution that:
1. Enables the proactive and automated management of consent records between networks and landowners
2. Provides an end-to-end self-serve digital tool for landowners to assess their entitlement to a consent and payment without the need for a claim agent
3. Offers customers that have a stake in the consent process, such as those wanting to connect to the network, visibility of the process and progress against it.
The key innovative aspects include:
· The visibility and proactive management of consents across geographies is the first of its kind, not only in the industry, but across wider national infrastructure providers
· Activities currently limited by manual processes and administrative burden, in many cases taking up to three months, will be accelerated through automation
By improving understanding and visibility of consents across the network, Wayl-ease will unlock novel routes to engagement with landowners and additional potential use cases for Land Registry data in whole system network planning
The current TRL and IRL is low (1-2) as this level of digitalisation has not been undertaken elsewhere. The scale of the Discovery phase aims to determine the feasibility and develop a roadmap for future solutions (TRL and IRL of 2-4). Different use cases and routes to commercialisation for Wayl-ease will also be explored. The findings will benefit networks and other infrastructure providers, either informing development of their own systems or a future commercial solution.
UKPN is afforded funding to maintain consents status quo but there is no dedicated development funding to offer this functionality to landowners or customers. Considerable investment , engagement is required to develop Wayl-ease into a solution that can facilitate faster and cheaper network transformation and asset rollout (Challenge 1), which would not be achievable as part of business-as-usual activity. The feasibility and feasibility development must be undertaken before widespread deployment, which is perfectly suited to the phased nature of SIF.
Impacts and Benefits
The current position against which we evaluate the success of Wayl-ease is spread across several key benefits and metrics. The volume and financial value of wayleaves payments made by UKPN per year, the value of erroneous payments and number of existing wayleaves that are out of date are key factors. This data and the associated financials will serve as today’s counterfactual, however, as the project evolves and the visibility of data extends, other metrics will be established to serve as additional basis for evaluating impact.
We have identified the following benefits from successful delivery:
Financial - future reductions in the cost of operating the network
· Minimise erroneous payments issued annually by UKPN (e.g. payment to the wrong landowner, incorrect compensation payment for assets and works)
o Metrics: Number of erroneous payments, annual cost of wayleave payments
· Faster asset maintenance and upgrade work on customer premises
o Metrics: number of site visits, upgrade time, reduction in repeat visits
· Automation of manual wayleave processes drives efficiencies and leads to significant time savings
o Metrics: time and costs reductions
Financial - cost savings per annum for users of network services
· Accurate compensation to the correct customers for the correct assets
o Metrics: Number of erroneous payments, annual cost of wayleave payments
Environmental - carbon reduction – direct CO2 savings per annum
· Reduced visits to customer premises decreases CO2 emitted by operational vehicles
· Accurate wayleaves will allow for works to be performed faster through better network planning and timely connections, enabling more LCTs and unlocking carbon reductions
o Metrics: direct CO2 savings per annum
New to market - services
· The project will develop a customer-facing consents tool, ensuring up-to-date records and allowing simplified self-service for wayleave agreements. This will reduce consent processing time and increase customer satisfaction.
o Metrics: Consent processing time (e.g. three months down to hours), measure of customer service (through surveys), New service developed and launched
New to market – processes
· Challenges related to wayleaves are not unique to the energy sector, all critical national infrastructure operators utilise wayleaves in some form, leading to benefits in many industries because of this innovation.
All benefits are linked to the deployment of the Wayl-ease solution into business-as-usual following Beta, although some may be realised during the Project.
