Building estate-wide water intelligence at Heart Academies Trust
From estate visibility to targeted water-efficiency improvements
SWAES supports Heart Academies Trust across its full complement of academies, combining high-frequency monitoring, automated reporting, specialist review and practical investigation to identify hidden water loss, inefficient use and opportunities for continued improvement.
CLIENT
Heart Academies Trust
Estate-wide visibility
SECTOR
Education
SERVICES
Schools have changing occupancy patterns and limited time for manual meter checking. SWAES provides a consistent view of water performance across the Trust, helping estate teams compare consumption, recognise unusual patterns and understand which locations require closer attention. Monitoring provides the early warning, while regular SWAES analysis and engineering review explain what the data means and help turn it into practical action.
Water Intelligence • Monitoring • Reporting • Leak Detection • Efficiency Improvements
Identifying hidden water loss at Shackleton
At Shackleton Primary School, monitoring highlighted consumption that required further investigation. SWAES worked with the Trust to identify a hidden leak that could otherwise have continued unnoticed, increasing both water use and operating costs. The finding demonstrated the value of combining automated monitoring with active technical review. Detecting an anomaly is only the first step; understanding its likely cause and supporting a targeted response is what enables avoidable loss to be addressed.
Improving water use at the point of use
Across the wider estate, SWAES has also identified inefficient toilet flushing and other areas of avoidable consumption. At one academy, this has progressed into the provision of replacement direct toilet flush valves designed to improve performance and reduce unnecessary water use.
These practical interventions show how portfolio monitoring can move beyond visibility and support measurable operational improvements within individual schools.
Reporting and benchmarking across the Trust
Automated reports keep water performance visible to the Trust’s estate team, highlighting trends, abnormal use, persistent consumption and priority areas for investigation. Where deeper interpretation is required, SWAES engineers review the findings and provide practical recommendations.
Quarterly water stories and league-table comparisons can help each school understand its performance within the wider estate, recognise improvement and identify where further action may be beneficial.
A foundation for continued improvement
The programme provides Heart Academies Trust with an increasingly complete picture of how water is being used across its schools. As monitoring coverage and reporting develop, the Trust can benchmark sites more consistently, prioritise investment and build a coordinated approach to long-term water reduction.
The relationship demonstrates how schools can begin with essential monitoring and progressively develop towards active performance management, targeted intervention and continuous improvement.