Instant bill and carbon cuts
Catch silent urinal leaks, continuously running cisterns, and hot water recirculation waste instantly. Cut Scope 1 and 2 utility emissions from week one.
Immediate operational utility savings
Funded by 
Turn Your Building into an Intelligent, Zero-Waste Property.
An Ofwat WEL 1 trial for 30 UK commercial buildings: smart sub-metering, wire-free occupancy sensing, and insurer-backed validation, installed at no cost for qualifying estates.
- £10,000+
- Free tech and plumbed assets
- 10%–30%
- Utility waste reduction
- Zero
- Tenant and work disruption
Backed by leading delivery, insurance, academic, and water-sector partners
Why estates teams register early
Commercial buildings lose 10–30% of water to undetected leaks, failing cisterns, and out-of-hours baseload. Project Dash is the UK's first cross-vector telemetry trial with insurer-backed water management, and the cohort closes at 30 sites.
Aviva insurer validation
Co-design the UK property safety standard. Receive an Aviva-backed Water Management Plan (WMP) to mitigate catastrophic Escape of Water (EoW) risks.
Pathway to insurance risk recognition
Keep equipment free forever
All physical sub-meters and automated isolation shut-off valves remain the permanent capital property of your building at zero charge.
Permanent asset and valving upgrade
Continuous improvement loop
Occupancy and flow correlated in real time, from IoT signal to FM fix to insurer-validated outcome, then back to sharper detection.
Register your buildingIoT
Data Sources
Quensus sub-metering + Direk wire-free spatial occupancy loggers.
AI
Cross Vector
Correlates water consumption against live room presence to flag hidden flow & dead legs.
Fix
FM Response
Auto valve shut-off & prioritised fix lists seamlessly routed into Wates FM workflows.
Value
Outcomes
Permanent cost reduction, Aviva insurance validation, and zero disruption to daily tenants.
One system from signal to response
Room-level occupancy mapped against sub-metered flow isolates hidden leaks, flags out-of-hours baseload, and surfaces stagnation risks before they become claims.
Signal layer
Direk
Occupancy & energy sensing
Wire-free room signals show whether water use matches real occupancy patterns.
Quensus
Smart sub-metering
High-frequency flow data surfaces abnormal baseload and hidden loss routes early.
Cross-vector AI
Detection engine
Combined occupancy and flow logic filters noise and elevates credible anomaly events before they become claims.
Response layer
Wates
FM delivery
Out-of-hours install, maintenance, and escalation pathways keep operations uninterrupted.
Aviva
Insurance-backed plans
Water Management Plans convert alerts into insurer-aligned actions and audit-ready records.
Built for occupied buildings
Installation, sensing, and compliance designed to protect uptime and tenant comfort, not interrupt it.
Installation by your preferred plumber or Wates
Wates teams can install outside core occupancy windows to minimise tenant-facing disruption.
Under 60-minute zone isolation
Typical isolation windows stay below 60 minutes per zone during controlled intervention.
GDPR-safe occupancy detection
Zero-camera, zero-audio spatial sensing with 100% GDPR-compliant data handling controls.
Stronger maintenance safety oversight
Abnormal system-behaviour visibility strengthens maintenance routines and escalation response.
Behaviour change
Tenant engagement without the overhead
Visible, low-friction nudges in occupied spaces help estates teams shift tenant behaviour without adding FM workload.
- Lobby displays that keep water efficiency visible
- Washroom nudges at the point of use
- Quarterly touchpoints, under 30 minutes of estates time
9%
UK commercial water demand reduction benchmark your building contributes toward.
Delivered by
Programme leadership
From registration to live monitoring
One joined-up path from first contact to ongoing alerts and insurer-ready reporting. Shortlisted buildings work with Wates installation teams, Aviva-backed risk planning, and the wider Project Dash consortium.
- 3 minutes
Register your building
Submit core site details and water-risk priorities. We confirm quickly whether the asset fits trial criteria.
- 30 minutes
Feasibility survey
Technical check of metering points and occupancy profile, plus a desktop and site review of washrooms, tea points, and DHW feeds.
- 1 day
Installation
Wates plumbers install sub-meters and sensors. Each zone isolated under 60 minutes, outside core occupancy windows.
- Ongoing
Live monitoring
Leak alerts funnel into FM fix lists. At trial close, receive audited sustainability reports, insurance badges, and retain all hardware.
30 places nationally
Is your building a fit?
Offices, education, or care sectors with active estates management only.
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Building profile
A UK commercial site (offices, education or care) with active facilities or estates management in place.
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Stakeholder commitment
A responsible decision-maker is willing to register and support trial participation.
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Operational access
The site can provide coordinated access for professional installation activity.
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Risk priority
Your team is actively looking to reduce hidden leaks, water waste, and Escape of Water exposure.
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Monitoring value
You want practical monitoring insights and reporting to support operations, compliance, and ESG evidence.
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Limited cohort
Only 30 qualifying UK commercial buildings will be selected nationally.
Potential participant FAQs
Project Dash: enabling water reduction through an action-driven water-insurance nexus. Funding, partners, disruption, data privacy, and what happens after the trial.
Nationally, demand for water is projected to exceed supply, particularly during hotter, drier periods, driven by climate change, population growth, economic development, and the need to leave enough water for nature. Per-person consumption has roughly doubled since the 1960s. Without action, temporary use bans (hosepipes, vehicle washing, window cleaning) could affect businesses. The Government has set a target to reduce business water demand by 9% by 2037–38, alongside tough leakage targets for water companies and wider per-person reduction goals.
Quensus Limited (Lead Partner): AI and IoT water management specialising in real-time, fixture-level flow analytics and automatic leakage shut-off. Direk: wire-free, battery-powered spatial occupancy and footprint analytics. Wates Group: facilities management and property services across trial sites. Aviva: global building insurer co-designing insurance-backed property safety standards. Everflow: UK business water, waste, telephone and broadband retailer (everflowutilities.com). Waterwise: independent not-for-profit focused on decreasing water consumption and sector learning. University of Surrey & Weir The Agency: independent human insight and behaviour-change specialists leading trial design, nudge materials, and statistical analysis. The consortium for this Ofwat WEL 1 trial is listed on the Water Innovation Fund project page.
No. All equipment, software licensing, plumber installations, and ongoing operational support are provided 100% free of charge for the entire duration of the project.
The project is funded by Ofwat (the water services regulation authority) through its Water Efficiency Lab (WEL 1) competition to trial how greater monitoring and control of water use in commercial premises can drive permanent demand reduction. See the Ofwat WEL 1 award listing.
Your on-site Facilities Manager, Building Manager, or designated Property Management representative will be the primary day-to-day contact. Insights feed into automated, prioritised fix lists that fit standard maintenance workflows, so the on-site team can review alerts without resetting daily routines. We also encourage engagement from building tenants and occupants, who receive light-touch, tailored water-saving prompts via toolkits managed by Waterwise and Weir.
Installation: Most buildings can have core sensors and monitoring hubs installed in a single day. Washrooms and specific zones are isolated one at a time, keeping local water closures to under an hour each. Study length: The active data-collection and intervention phase spans 18 months, running from launch through December 2027. Research feedback: Building managers and representative tenant groups may take part in brief surveys and short interviews (under 30 minutes, at most once per quarter) conducted by the University of Surrey team.
Free infrastructure upgrade: On average, each participating building receives up to £10,000 of hardware, software, and engineering services, including roughly 30 occupancy, energy, and water sensors. Immediate financial savings: Commercial properties waste 10%–30% of water through unaddressed continuous flow (leaking toilets, out-of-hours overflows). The system catches anomalies instantly, cutting water and hot-water energy bills. Insurer and ESG alignment: You receive a validated Evidence Pack and a formal Water Management Plan (WMP) certified alongside Aviva, turning water efficiency from a vague ESG goal into an insurance-recognised risk mitigation standard, with potential future premium benefits.
Only temporarily during plumbing of the internal Quensus sub-meter, which requires cutting a minor section of pipework. Zone-specific isolation is tightly controlled and lasts less than 60 minutes. No main external stopcocks are shut off by our teams, and the battery-powered Direk occupancy sensors require zero utility interruption.
No. All installation work can be scheduled entirely out-of-hours, during weekends, or during low-occupancy windows tailored to your building's operating schedule to prevent any commercial impact.
Health & Safety: All on-site works are executed by fully accredited, insured, and pre-vetted Wates-approved plumbers working under strict RAMS (Risk Assessments and Method Statements). Legionella control: Quensus provides continuous, high-resolution flow monitoring. By tracking regular water movement and flagging stagnancy or unexpected dead legs, the system strengthens mandatory Legionella water-safety compliance rather than introducing risk. Safeguarding & data privacy: Direk occupancy arrays are purely spatial infrared (PIR) and footprint loggers with no video, audio, or personally identifiable images. All data is anonymised at the zone level, ensuring UK GDPR compliance and a successful Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA).
Your data streams feed a secure, centralised dashboard monitored jointly by the University of Surrey evaluation team, Direk and Quensus software engineers, and the Wates facilities maintenance triage desk to manage rapid repair work orders. Raw data is not shared with your water wholesaler or retailer, so it cannot negatively affect baseline utility billing tariffs. At the end of the 18-month trial, anonymised, aggregated findings are compiled into a sector-wide public report disseminated nationally by Waterwise. All specific property names, company branding, personnel names, and physical addresses are kept confidential and scrubbed from public documentation.
All project data is protected by enterprise-grade encryption in transit and at rest. Telemetry is processed entirely within secure, UK-based cloud servers using strict role-based access controls (RBAC) and defined data retention boundaries.
All physical meters and valves can remain the permanent property of the building. At the conclusion of the funding period, you are offered a completely optional, no-obligation ongoing subscription to the cloud dashboards. Quensus: ongoing software and leak-alert analytics cost £6 per month per unit (one unit can handle up to four meters). Direk: ongoing spatial occupancy, footprint, and integrated energy tracking operates on a separate post-trial SaaS model, with indicative rates for typical multi-let, multi-floor offices ranging from £3,000 to £12,000 per year, offset by avoiding multi-million-pound Escape of Water claims and lowering building energy waste. If you choose not to subscribe, dashboards lapse but plumbed fittings remain as a free asset upgrade. You retain functional manual stopcocks to isolate water zones during future maintenance.