Of all the things to find inside a wastewater pump, a set of car keys is unlikely to be at the top of the list. But that is what maintenance engineers at Southern Water discovered after responding to an alert from SAM4 at one of their wastewater pumping stations.
The alert itself wasn't about car keys. SAM4 had detected a process change at the station: a shift in operating behaviour that indicated one of the two pumps had stopped working. With no other warning from the asset itself, the alert prompted Southern Water's team to investigate.
When they lifted the pump for inspection, they found the keys lodged inside, alongside signs of advanced bearing wear. Both faults sat inside an asset that is impossible to inspect without taking it offline: submerged wastewater pumps operate sealed inside wet wells, where conventional sensors can't reach and visual checks aren't an option during normal operations.
Austin Phillips, Programme Manager Pollution Task Force at Southern Water, said: “The most likely explanation is that the keys were accidentally dropped down a toilet or drain, which ultimately feeds into the pumping station. The AI Samotics technology monitors the station 24/7. It identified a process change: only one pump was operating. The alert went out immediately and engineers headed off a potential failure at the station.”
Southern Water and Samotics have been working together since a successful pilot in 2024. Following a sustained rollout across 2025, the partnership is on track to have deployed over 3,500 SAM4 units across Southern Water's wastewater and clean water network by the end of the year.
Tom Swain, Head of UK & Ireland at Samotics, said: “Detections like this are exactly why Southern Water has invested in continuous monitoring across its network. By the time a wastewater pump shows visible signs of trouble, the window to act has often already closed, and on a station running close to capacity, that's the difference between a planned repair and a pollution event.
“SAM4 gives Southern Water's control room continuous visibility into how every monitored asset is performing. So when something changes, the team knows quickly and can investigate before a small issue becomes a serious one. It's that early insight, applied consistently across thousands of assets, that builds genuine network resilience.”
The Samotics SAM4 technology uses Electrical Signature Analysis (ESA) to monitor equipment remotely from the motor control cabinet, with AI analysing current and voltage signals from pumps and motors. This approach makes it possible to monitor hard-to-reach and submerged assets continuously, without installing sensors on the equipment itself.
Hard-to-reach assets. Hard-to-spot faults. Continuous visibility. Find out how SAM4 helps water utilities catch developing issues in equipment they can't easily inspect.