Real-time data is empowering commercial water users to detect leaks, reduce usage, and avoid costly surprises.
A SINGLE LEAK at a coastal marina could have cost a club up to $67,000. Water loss had been invisible and silent, occurring beneath a floating pontoon with no outward sign of trouble. It might have gone undetected for months until South East Water’s Business Customer team, with the support of Iota’s monitoring platform, raised the alarm. That intervention saved up to 12.7 million litres of water before the next bill arrived.
Stories like this are becoming increasingly common, as large water users adopt innovative water management solutions to enhance oversight, reduce costs, and lower consumption.
At the centre of this shift is David Mason, Customer and Marketing Director at Iota, a wholly owned subsidiary of South East Water.
With a focus on commercialising proven innovations from South East Water’s internal programs, Mason has been instrumental in bringing digital solutions like Flow Lotic and Footprint to market.
“Our goal is to help large water users, from councils to businesses and community facilities, manage demand more effectively,” Mason said. “Because when they save water, the whole network benefits.”
The opportunity is significant. South East Water’s commercial customers account for just eight per cent of its base but consume nearly a quarter of the water it purchases from Melbourne Water. That imbalance inspired South East Water to design and test innovative monitoring platforms that could deliver impact at scale.
Turning data into action
One of Iota’s flagship solutions is a two-part system that combines Flow Lotic Internet of Things (IoT) data loggers with Footprint, a cloudbased visualisation platform. Flow Lotic transmits usage data from main and sub-meters, while Footprint presents that data in an intuitive dashboard that supports alerts, trend analysis and custom reporting.
“We started deploying this solution over a decade ago during the Millennium Drought,” Mason said. “It was developed to help South East Water reduce network demand by engaging with their largest water users in a more meaningful way.”
Since then, the platform has been refined through direct customer feedback and broader commercial deployments. One local council used Footprint to identify a previously undetected leak in a Melbourne parkland. Over a single quarter, that leak would have equated to 14 million litres of water and a potential bill of $55,000.
In another case, a local swimming pool was alerted to overnight water use when the facility was closed. The culprit was a faulty spa that had been cycling constantly without staff knowledge.
Sandringham Yacht Club, a more recent adopter, uncovered a submerged leak in its marina after South East Water’s Business Customer team emailed and shared Footprint’s data alert.
“In the absence of the data and email, we would not know we had a leak,” Chief Executive Officer Richard Hewett said.
“It was a failed part on a domestic waterline under the marina pontoon, so it was not visually apparent. The high winds and noise over the past week meant no one would have heard it either. The data notification enabled us to be aware of it, go looking for it, find it and repair it.”
Supporting long-term savings
While early leak detection is a strong value proposition, Mason said that the system’s broader power lies in its configurability. Customers can create customised usage profiles, adjust for seasonal trends and receive alerts only when flows deviate from their established parameters.
“The great thing about Footprint is that it doesn’t just show you data; it helps you act on it,” Mason said. “It gives users the control to define what ‘normal’ looks like for them, then flags exceptions in near realtime.”
This approach allows organisations to catch anomalies without needing to constantly check the portal.
“We’ve had a lot of feedback from customers who want by-exception reporting,” he said.
“They don’t want to log in daily. They want to be told when something needs attention.”
In some cases, organisations are using the platform for broader sustainability goals. A council in South East Water’s region is exploring the use of hot water data from sub-metered buildings to help size new heat pump systems. Others are using sub-metering to separate tenant usage in shared buildings, such as shopping centres, or to verify the performance of stormwater harvesting systems.
“These are things we didn’t originally design the platform for, but they’ve emerged through use,” Mason said. “Once people start measuring, they begin to find new opportunities to optimise.”
WaterSmart in practice
The benefits of Footprint and Flow Lotic are now being scaled through South East Water’s delivery of Department of Energy Environment and Climate Action’s (DEECA) WaterSmart program. The initiative targets the utility’s highest 100 consuming commercial and industrial customers, aiming to help them detect leaks, reduce waste, and manage costs. Onboarding commenced in early 2025.
“So far, they’ve rolled out approximately 250 data loggers across 40 customers,” Mason said. “Thirteen of those customers detected leaks within the first few weeks, and the total savings from January through July were 47 megalitres of water.”
The program is still growing, with an eventual target of 750 monitored sites.
“This is just the beginning,” Mason said. “As more organisations come on board, we expect to see significant cumulative savings, not just in dollars but in overall water demand across the network.”
Empowering water champions
Iota places a strong emphasis on customer training and support. When onboarding new users, the company identifies internal water champions who can lead the implementation and get value from the data.
“These champions are critical,” Mason said. “They’re the ones who look at patterns, configure alerts and make things happen internally.”
The Footprint interface was recently redesigned to make that job easier. Enhancements include simplified drag-and-select functions, year-on-year overlays and seasonally adjusted baselines. Iota is also trialling new analytics capabilities to automate anomaly detection based on machine learning.
“We want to move toward smarter alerts without users needing to manually configure thresholds,” Mason said. “That’s the next frontier, making it even easier to find issues before they escalate.”
Smart networks, shared responsibility
Although Footprint was built for commercial and industrial use, Mason said the benefits extend far beyond individual businesses.
“This is about building more intelligent water networks,” he said.
“If you can reduce demand from your biggest users, that improves resilience across the whole system.”
As with any innovation, funding and responsibility are important factors. Mason said that decisions about who pays can affect rollout speed. Still, he believes the case for co-investment is strong.
“Utilities benefit from reduced demand, fewer bursts, and better customer relationships,” he said. “Customers save money, and councils meet their environmental and planning goals. Everyone gains from these solutions.”
A call to act now
As water utilities plan for a more sustainable and resilient future, Iota sees smart water management solutions as essential infrastructure. In Mason’s view, the sector is ready, but more leadership is needed.
“Whether it’s regulatory targets, ESG (environmental, social and governance) requirements or rising utility costs, commercial and council users are actively looking for ways to reduce water use,” he said.
“If utilities don’t offer these smart water management solutions, the customers will find them anyway, and they may bypass the opportunity to align with broader utility goals.”
The message is clear. For utilities and councils, now is the time to engage, deploy and support the digital solutions that deliver smarter, faster, more transparent outcomes for everyone.
This story was originally published by Inside Water.
