Utility Week

26 www.utilityweek.co.uk/fLeX I N N O V A T I O N // Instead of coming up with solutions and then making these long- term roadmaps and building them out over months, it's about figuring out firstly what problems are worth solving // Jamie Ford, director of commercial and innovation, Southern Water Bluewave is also intended to encompass a new way of working. "Instead of coming up with solutions and then making these long-term roadmaps and building them out over months, it's about figuring out firstly what problems are worth solving. So, we're focused on the highest value problems. Value can be financial, value can be about improving our customers' lives, it can be about helping the environment, it can be about all sorts of things – a lot of it's around digitising what we do," Ford explains. Innovation consultant Jennifer Torry picks up the theme: "It is very much about what's the problem, whether that's an operator on a wastewater site, or whether that's actually customers, and we do what's called a 'rapid start 48-hour ideation session', to bring those people in to help solve the problems. "We then select solutions that have the most legs, and that's determined by the steering group, and the stakeholders and the exec board here at Southern. After that we do fast rapid experimentation to see if that idea is worth developing in the first instance. "So you're cutting out those really long roadmaps. It means you avoid building a T ucked away in the small backstreets behind Brighton Station is Southern Water's version of a start-up. In shared modern offices with relaxed breakout spaces, a health- food café and funky coloured furniture, a small team of innovation experts and digital engineers is at work. ey devise experiments and programmes to test new ideas to ensure that the money Southern invests in innovation gives them the most bang for their buck. While the company's main bases are in Worthing and Durrington in West Sussex and in Falmer a few miles down the road, this is very consciously a new outpost, says Jamie Ford, Southern Water's director of commercial and innovation. "We wanted to have somewhere we can get people from across our business, and outside, and bring them into an environment that was a little different, where they can leave the day job behind and focus on the activity. "We meet in the small office, or 'Lab', around one big desk. Walls are plastered with Post-it notes and flow charts, vestiges of the latest 'sprints' and 'ideation' sessions." Set up in June 2018, this is the base for what Southern Water is terming Bluewave – a catch-all programme for its quick-win, innovation-led improvements, many around digitilisation, and longer-term R&D activities including collaboration with other water companies and a number of universities, carried out in research facilities around its region. ere are 13 people in the Bluewave team – seven in the 'Lab' and six in R&D functions. ...without wasting money on ideas that don't pay dividends? Southern Water's new Bluewave team has a plan By Denise Chevin H o w d o y o u i n v e s t i n i n n o v a t i o n . . .

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