When Yorkshire Water needed rapid visibility across thousands of storm overflow assets, Mott MacDonald Bentley (MMB) reconfigured trusted digital tools instead of building a new system, giving more than 130 people across a dozen organisations a single, live source of truth.
Across the water sector, utilities are under pressure to make better decisions from complex asset data. Regulatory expectations, ageing infrastructure, changing weather patterns and demands for transparency are pushing companies and partners to work faster and with more confidence.
For MMB, that challenge came into focus through Yorkshire Water's storm overflow survey program.
MMB is a fully integrated design-and-build business combining Mott MacDonald's design expertise with JN Bentley's construction delivery capability. It designs and builds critical water and wastewater infrastructure across the UK, working with major utilities including Yorkshire Water.
Yorkshire Water needed a reliable baseline for storm overflow assets across 2,400 locations. The aim was to understand asset conditions, identify gaps and help teams move from reactive asset management to a more proactive model.
"We're trying to move towards being more proactive and understanding exactly where assets are, where the gaps are and promote projects to quickly fill those gaps. We needed a lot of data to know exactly where we were." - Lumi Ajayi, Project Manager, Program Delivery at Yorkshire Water
The pressure was immediate. But at this scale, moving fast without structure could create new risks: inconsistent forms, duplicate records, lost information, and multiple versions of the truth. MMB needed to help surveyors capture data consistently, and give Yorkshire Water a live view of progress and outcomes.
The team already had a foundation. MMB had deployed Autodesk Forma Build across the region as part of its inspection and testing strategy, and saw that the same quality-workflow capabilities could be reconfigured for large-scale survey data collection.
"We had been using Autodesk Forma Build for inspection and testing, and the main benefit was the instantaneous data," says Fiona Booth, Design Lead at MMB. "We could carry out these surveys at pace, with information available instantly and in an organised manner, eliminating the need to sort through paper forms and the risk of information getting lost."
Instead of commissioning a new system, MMB connected tools it already understood. Moata, MMB's proprietary digital platform, gave teams a live geospatial view of more than 2,400 survey locations. Forma Build became the hub for forms, asset data, photos, videos, validation, and decision logging. Power BI dashboards, embedded and shared through Moata, turned that data into live insight.
MMB deployed the workflow in just 9 days.
Set-up began with asset information from Yorkshire Water. MMB imported the data directly into Forma Build, creating asset records at scale instead of building thousands by hand. The team then designed survey forms, tested them on one site, refined the questions and adjusted the structure before wider rollout.
This was not just form building. It was data design. Some responses had to be mandatory. Others had to be multiple choice rather than free text so they could be analysed consistently. The team considered not only what a surveyor needed to capture on site, but also what engineers, coordinators and Yorkshire Water would need to understand from that data afterwards.
"Every piece of data gave an actionable insight," says Francis Baker, Digital Delivery Lead at MMB. "Does it need another survey? Does it need another action? Each question was tailored to give that answer."
Requirements evolved throughout the project, and Forma Build's configurable forms and asset fields allowed MMB to adapt. Access control was equally important. Surveyors submitted forms from site. Office teams validated and updated asset information. Yorkshire Water and partners had the right visibility without compromising data integrity.
"It was not just ourselves. Yorkshire Water and other contract partners had access to the same data. Everybody was working from the same place, so it was a true CDE in that sense." - Fiona Booth, Design Lead at Mott MacDonald Bentley
For survey teams, the workflow started in Moata, where they could plan visits, check access, and filter sites by organisation before moving directly into the relevant asset record in Forma Build. There, they completed structured forms on mobile devices, capturing photos, videos, compliance status, damage, access requirements, and follow-up responsibility. The Forma Build Data Connector fed the data directly into dashboards, allowing MMB and Yorkshire Water to check survey completion, identify gaps, filter by asset type and route actions without opening thousands of records.
"The data was being fed on a daily basis from MMB, so we knew exactly which assets needed to go into the right workstream," says Lumi Ajayi. "It helped us be more agile and make decisions a lot quicker."
For Yorkshire Water, that meant a clearer, more current view of asset condition and compliance risk. For MMB, it meant fewer manual handoffs, less duplication, and a controlled workflow that kept teams aligned. The dataset continued to deliver value long after the surveys concluded.
"We still refer to it to this day," says Lumi Ajayi. "Other business streams still use some of the data we collected."
The project delivered at scale: 70,000 survey responses, 30,000 additional asset datasets, and 130 peak users across more than 12 organisations. MMB expected surveyors to need significant support, but after initial training, demand was minimal.
For MMB, the program became a proof point for standardised forms, assets, and data structures across wider inspection and testing work. Because the data was consistent, teams could trend information across the full dataset, something only possible when analysis is designed in from the outset. The workflow has been adapted for more than ten additional projects, including work with Northumbrian Water and Severn Trent.
In water infrastructure, better decisions depend on better data. By using Forma Build as the hub for field capture and asset information, MMB helped Yorkshire Water move faster, work from trusted insight, and create a repeatable model for digital delivery.
"Understanding our assets and assessing their performance under pressure is a strategic priority at Yorkshire Water. MMB gave us a tool that became essential in meeting all delivery milestones and provided clear, constant visibility across the project." - Lumi Ajayi, Project Manager, Program Delivery at Yorkshire Water
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