VODA.ai is honoured to be selected by Ferguson as their exclusive provider of artificial intelligence software. This partnership adds to Ferguson Waterworks’ best-in-class solutions and quality products. VODA.ai’s daVinci ML (machine learning) engine supports the Ferguson commitment to expert decision-making through a wide range of products and services for customers to improve their operations, construction, and maintenance projects.
The VODA.ai and Ferguson partnership takes the guesswork out of prioritising infrastructure projects. Whereas many utilities choose which water pipes to replace based on material, pipe age, or failure history, the VODA.ai daVinci ML engine provides more accurate predictive data regarding pipe life expectancy. ‘The Ferguson – partnership combines world-class products and services with VODA.ai’s powerful machine learning to prioritise every pipe segment by risk using both likelihood and consequences of failure’, said Nick Lanza, Director of Municipal Sales for Ferguson.
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The daVinci ML technology identifies pipe segments that are more likely to fail in the future, provides tools to help a utility calculate and understand the consequence of failure and the associated business risk. Then, the technology provides the remaining useful life for every pipe in a given network. With these insights, utilities can prioritise mains for rehab or replacement and target areas for leak monitoring or condition assessment.
Utilities can use reports powered by daVinci ML to understand how much capital investment is needed over the long term and where to target these resources to reduce service disruptions and failure rates. This makes it easy for utilities to plan their operating and engineering programs by tailoring their course of action and focusing their resources on the highest risk assets.
‘Each utility has different combinations of pipe materials, ages, sizes, soil, weather, proximity to roads, railroads and bridges, rainfall, contractor skills, and even seismic activity. Machine learning doesn’t ‘care’ but instead simply looks for patterns that led to prior failures and assigns probabilities of future health based on those patterns’, said Lanza.
‘The team at Ferguson is a great partner for us. Their industry leadership will help VODA.ai with greater market access and delivery of additional benefits to utilities. By creating this partnership, we will work with their talented team to support smarter decision making and continue to serve the water industry’, said George Demosthenous, CEO at VODA.ai.
