Bringing cost certainty and control to OT system transformation

The challenge: Replacing an aging OT system at pace, with controlled cost

A major UK water utility company needed to replace its Regional Telemetry System (RTS), a 20-year-old system at the core of its OT platform. The legacy system was increasingly costly to maintain and unable to support the analytics capabilities required for modern network operations.

This created two critical challenges for the organisation:

1. With the RTS underpinning critical national infrastructure, the legacy system posed significant operational and regulatory risks. The organisation faced a tight transformation timeline to implement and realise the benefits of a new system.
    
2. Other water utility companies had been met with spiralling delivery costs when implementing a new RTS. The new sourcing approach needed to provide cost certainty and strong control over delivery.
    

The approach: Leveraging a flexible, multi-stage procurement

The team ran a rigorous, four-stage Competitive Flexible Procedure under Procurement Act 2023, with stringent evaluation criteria and in-depth workshops to test delivery plans, reduce risk, and ensure cost certainty.

A single lead supplier was appointed for both software and system integration, creating clear end-to-end accountability and stronger control over delivery.
 

The results: 42% savings, with cost certainty and accelerated delivery
 

The client-Efficio team secured a fully integrated RTS solution under a single contract, with a 10-year fixed-price software agreement and milestone-based delivery model, providing cost certainty and reducing delivery risk.

The programme delivered 42% savings across the contract lifecycle, versus the average of first-round supplier bids. It also enabled a more flexible delivery approach to accelerate value realisation. Supported by Efficio’s delivery expertise, the full procurement process, including internal approvals, was completed within nine months.