Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
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10 | DECEMBER 2018 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk Research that asks the big questions The Talk: Interview Steve Kaye, the new chief executive of UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR), wants to get the industry thinking collaboratively about its biggest challenges Interview by James Brockett A s the man who led the innovation function at Anglian Water for over 15 years, Steve Kaye knows the value of collaboration in coming up with answers to a water company's challenges. Through initiatives such as the Shop Win- dow and the Water Innovation Network, he helped create a culture at Anglian where the utility did not expect to know all the answers to its challenges itself, but instead sought to develop solutions through partnership working with the supply chain and others. This is exactly the approach he wants to put into practice on larger scale in his new role as chief executive of UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR). The organi- sation, which commissions research on behalf of all the UK's water and sewerage companies on 'one voice' issues, recently Caption vksjdbv j vdj n kjdl nlkjdfnb set out a dozen 'Big Questions' which it wants to help the water industry solve, and is poised to launch a programme of events where individuals and companies from all parts of the water sector, and outside, can contribute to shaping its research programme. "In all the years I've been involved in innovation and R&D, I've always felt that UKWIR was a great way for the water industry to get leverage and funding for research and to have a collective voice on issues that are common to all of us," says Kaye, who took over at the helm of the or- ganisation in September. "I think there's a real opportunity to bring people together, to apply some collective brainpower to our challenges, and also to bring in other sectors and sources of funding to collabo- rate with us where we can." UKWIR's 'Big Questions' are not short of ambition. They include how to achieve zero leakage, zero interruptions to supply, zero uncontrolled discharges from sewers and zero customers in water poverty. So are these ambitions really achiev- able? Kaye believes so, saying that the industry needs to be ambitious and aim high if it is to make real progress. "The reason we are asking these ques- tions is that we want to create a paradigm shiĊ½," says Kaye. "When Kennedy said he wanted to put a man on the moon, they found a way to do it. It was an aspiration, and taking on that goal meant changing the face of space technology. Innovation is like that. If you just say 'we want a 10% reduction in x' we'll probably just work harder at the things we do already. The big ambitions are meant to drive big in-