From Concept to Production: Interview with Pipelife’s Head of R&D, Konstantinos Akritanakis

Innovation in today’s piping industry is driven by many factors: evolving customer needs, digitalization, labor shortages and climate change. But how do these trends translate into real products and solutions?

In this interview, Konstantinos Akritanakis, Pipelife's Head of R&D, takes us behind the scenes of product development, sharing insights into everything from digital simulations and AI to prefabrication, the use of recycled materials, and innovations that could shape the industry's future.

What originally drew you to engineering and R&D, and what excites you most about the industry today?

As a kid, I remember playing with toys and being interested in engines and cars. This led me to engineering, and eventually to the piping industry. The piping industry has a history of more than 2000 years, but it is still changing, and there is a lot of room for innovation.

Today, the climate is the biggest influencer of product development. We see areas with severe droughts where precision irrigation solutions are needed, and regions with heavy floods, where stormwater applications are needed. So, there are two completely different areas requiring innovation within the same industry.

Can you walk us through the journey from an idea to a finished piping solution?

There is a dedicated section in our company that analyzes market needs and the voice of the customer. Our role is to translate this voice into engineering.

Once the idea is refined according to the market needs, it is our part to specify the product. And then the journey of development starts, which combines designing, simulation, prototyping and trials — to reach the point of launching a new product.

How do you ensure products perform reliably in real-world conditions? What are the most important factors that must be evaluated during product testing?

We produce products that have a lifespan of 50 to 100 years. So we have to innovate to come up with tests that can prove that after 100 years, the product will perform in the same way.

This is a special part of R&D, coming up with new testing procedures. There are tests that simulate the aging process of the pipe; we can also simulate weathering conditions.

How is digitalization transforming R&D processes?

Digitalization is one of the most important parts of R&D. Before the first actual trial, there are a lot of things happening — 3D design, simulations and trials in digital form that save a lot of time.

We can see the flow of the water and optimize it. We can also optimize the flow of the material in a mold and the shape and design of a product. It doesn't happen by chance. It is a result of hard work with digital tools.

After a lot of digital trials, you come up with the optimum design, and then the next step is real-life trials to fine-tune the digital results.

Are AI technologies becoming part of product development?

AI is something new for all of us, and we are very careful when using it. It helps us a lot with patent searches and even with some initial optimizations, such as the shape and design of a new product.

But AI is not the cure for everything. It's a nice tool that saves a lot of time, but it needs intervention from the human side to work in an efficient way.

What role does customer feedback play in refining products? How important is collaboration with contractors, designers, and installers during development?

This is one of the most difficult challenges: obtaining customer feedback in a way that can be translated into engineering. We are in contact with our product categories and the sales teams to be closer to the customers and the construction sites.

I can tell you, the best way to come up with a good idea is to personally install a product — to become a plumber, to become a construction worker on the site. To feel it, understand the process and then shape your ideas. It can be much quicker than many hours of meetings and discussions.

That's why we are trying in R&D to be close to the market and close to production: to know if this idea can be brought to life, can be shaped into a pipe or into a fitting that actually works.

How do Pipelife’s solutions support faster and more efficient construction workflows?

If we look from the perspective of installers, there is a shortage of workforce. Installers are searching for simple solutions that are easy to install without too much labor.

So prefabricated systems are one solution that is discussed a lot, and it offers space for us, manufacturers, to come up with solutions that can be produced in an industrial environment and then moved to the construction site.

Can you give an example of how prefabrication can make installers' work faster and easier?

Installers are trying to avoid repetitive work that can be done in a quicker way and with high quality.

For example, prefabricated underfloor heating: it requires a lot of time and labor for an installer to be constantly bending to install the pipe on the floor. There is an automated way; we can do this on the production floor, and it can save up to 50% of the installer’s time.

How is sustainability influencing the way piping systems are designed today?

Sustainability plays a major role in our design and product development. We have to prove that after a product’s lifetime, it can be fully recycled. And we have to design it in a way that it is easily recyclable and can have a second life as another product.

Product development is not only about designing a good pipe, it is also about designing it in a proper way to make it sustainable. We strive to keep up with quality specifications and avoid materials that are not recyclable.

What are the biggest sustainability challenges facing the plastic piping industry?

One of the biggest challenges is the quality of recycled materials. There are a lot of grades of recycled material on the market, but it doesn't mean that all of them are good for our pipes.

That's why we made the decision to develop our own equipment to produce our own materials and maintain the quality of our pipes.

What other innovations are helping reduce the environmental footprint of construction and infrastructure projects?

Optimization of the pipes is a good example. We can simulate and optimize the shape of a corrugated profile so it can withstand the same pressures with less material. Then, we can test it in real life, prove the results, and come back with an optimized design that sometimes uses 10-15% less material.

We can achieve the same result with lower CO2 emissions and lower usage of materials.

Which recent innovation at Pipelife are you personally most proud of?

One nice innovation was the RainPort siphonic roof drainage system, which is a product used to evacuate water from the roofs of industrial sites.

We achieved water evacuation flow rates of up to 20 liters per second.

If you witness it in reality, it's like having a mechanical pump draining all the water from the roof. But it is pure physics combined with digital tools and simulation tools that showed us there is a way to reach 20 liters per second.

From the optimization perspective, we had reached a very high flow of 18 liters per second. And it took 17 more trials to reach 20 liters per second, which was a rewarding moment for all of us in R&D.

What are the next major frontiers for Pipelife’s R&D efforts?

Flexibility and having modular solutions are very important for R&D. It is a major challenge for us to develop modular solutions that are not only useful for one market, but for multiple markets.

It's a challenging environment, but we have a team that is competent. We have people who are at a high engineering level, and they accept all changes as a challenge for their personal development.

And each time we see a product that is optimized and answers the questions of the customer, it's a rewarding moment. We are glad to see an installer happy to install our product.