Ferguson chose VODA.ai as their exclusive provider of artificial intelligence software. The deal will be an add-on as a Ferguson Waterworks’ best-in-class solutions and quality products. DaVinci ML machine learning engine from VODA.ai supports the Ferguson commitment to excel in decision-making using different types of products and services for customers to improve their operations, construction, and maintenance projects.
The collaboration between VODA.ai and Ferguson eliminates the guesswork from prioritizing infrastructure projects. Rather than choosing which water pipes to repair based on content, pipe age, or failure history, the VODA.ai DaVinci ML engine offers more precise predictive data about pipe life expectancy.
“The Ferguson – partnership combines world-class products and services with VODA.ai’s powerful machine learning to prioritize every pipe segment by risk using both likelihood and consequences of failure,” said Nick Lanza, Director of Municipal Sales for Ferguson.
With DaVinci ML technology’s help, it becomes possible to identify pipe segments that are more likely to fail in the future. It provides tools to help a utility calculate and understand the consequence of failure and the associated business risk. Then the technology offers the remaining useful life for every pipe in a given network. Utilities can prioritize mains for rehab or replacement and target areas for leak monitoring or condition assessment with these insights.
Utilities make use of reports generated by DaVinci ML to get a better view of what amount of capital investment is required over the long term and what points need to be targeted to reduce service disruptions and failure rates. This lets utilities plan their operating and engineering program quickly after tailoring their course of action and pushing 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.