Northumbrian Water revolutionizes knowledge management in utilities

Northumbrian Water, serving over 4.4 million people in the UK, faced a challenge managing 20 million water infrastructure documents housed across legacy systems. To address this, they partnered with ClearPeople and migrated all legacy content to a unified Microsoft SharePoint platform. This enabled the use of AI-driven tools like SharePoint Syntex and Microsoft Viva Topics for automating metadata extraction and expertise discovery. The rollout allowed employees to quickly retrieve context-specific operational knowledge, access relevant documents, and connect with internal experts seamlessly via Microsoft 365 applications. AI models were used to capture and classify data from complex engineering drawings, including those previously only understood by experienced workers. These digital transformations helped support business continuity, particularly for onboarding new talent and preserving institutional knowledge. The deployment of these AI-powered knowledge management solutions is projected to result in an estimated £50 million in savings over 36 months by reducing manual paperwork, expediting document search, and enhancing collaboration across the organization.