Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 29TH MARCH - 4TH APRIL 2019 | 7 Interview A s International Women's Day was being marked around the world and by utilities here in the UK on Friday, 8 March, Nicci Russell was celebrating her second anniversary in post as managing director of Waterwise. When Utility Week meets her at an office in London where the small team of the not-for-profit NGO focused on water efficiency hot desks from time to time, we discuss what those two years at the top have been like. "Gosh, when you asked, the first word that came into my mind was 'tumultuous'; the second was 'amazing' – but I'm happy for you to use both of them," Russell laughs. "There is nothing quite like your first MD job," she continues. "You're used to having support networks around you and you suddenly feel it's just you and you're accountable. I had a team I was looking out for, so that first year was quite challenging." But Waterwise has gone from strength to strength and is now proud to have signed up all the UK water companies as supporters and affiliates, compared with around two-thirds when Russell became MD. Although relatively new to the role, she is no newcomer to the water industry, having been on the board of Water- wise since she set it up in September 2005 with Jacob Tompkins, following a conversation they had about form- ing an independent water efficiency body with industry support. Tompkins was policy adviser at Water UK before he co-founded Waterwise with Russell and became the managing director of the independent group. He has since le™ the organisation and is now co-founder and chief tech- nology officer at the Water Retail Company. Russell was policy director at Waterwise until 2013 and also has experience as a special adviser to a cabinet minister and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as well as a stint at the water regulator, Ofwat, from 2013-17. Russell reveals she had wanted to work at Ofwat "for a while" and felt the pull of the public sector drawing her in "almost emotionally". "I felt there was some work to be done in Ofwat in terms of driving the resilience and water efficiency and environmental agenda, and I got the sense that was starting to happen and there was an appetite for it in Ofwat. But I was keen to go in-house and be contributing to that, having been influencing from outside before." She also led on Ofwat's strategic approach to Wales, because there was a "not unfair assumption" in those days that Ofwat was "pretty active" in England but less so in Wales. "Ofwat is much better at it now, but certainly in those days sometimes people needed reminding – you regulate Wales as well," she recalls. When she joined the regulator, she initially worked on the water bill that brought in competition for business customers and then a "more wide-ranging brief " leading on the resilience duty. "I really loved my four years at Ofwat, not least because I got to work with the fabulous Cathryn Ross, whom I was lucky enough to have as my line manager," she says. It was Ross who helped to develop Russell and convinced her she was ready for the MD role. "Luckily the Waterwise board thought I was too. Without Ross and that Ofwat experience, I might have taken a different path or taken longer to get there." Her first day as managing director of Waterwise coincided with the organisation's annual conference. This year's conference, which was four times the size of the 2018 event, was held shortly a™er our conversation and included a keynote speech from Sir James Bevan, chief executive of the Environment Agency, in which he warned that England could face a water shortage in as little as 25 years' time (see p10-11). The theme of the conference was the pathway to ambitious water efficiency – getting to 100 litres a day or lower. Russell is "really excited" about the level of ambition around water efficiency and humbled by the organisation's stakeholders and supporters "being kind enough to say" Waterwise has played a part in that. But she is keen to see the water industry go further and used the conference as an opportunity to challenge the sector to "throw everything" at per capita consumption (PCC) to reduce it by 50 per cent, as the water industry has committed to do with leakage by 2050. Russell says the ambition to improve water efficiency in the sector encompasses water companies, regulators and government, but despite being impressed with progress, Waterwise continues to urge the involved parties to push harder. "Governments are finally really interested in water efficiency," she says. "The level of ambition we are see- ShinePix

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