Utility Week

seen him in business and operational and transformational roles, working far afield – including in California, Australia and Turkey. is breadth of experience and his rise from a Youth Training Opportunity Scheme at the age of 17 for the Eastern Electricity Board – and later in life an MBA – have furnished him with an ability to deal with people at all levels and in all cultures. Joined-up thinking Certainly, that is a vital asset in Watson's role at Northumbrian Water, which has unusually wide bandwidth. e structure affords the opportunity to integrate operations that sometimes suffer the right-hand, left-hand syndrome other organisations are prone to, and harness and develop technologies that play to the strengths of more joined-up thinking. But like any change, it all requires a mixture of charm and persuasion – and a bit of stiff talking. So, while Watson has the responsibility for all the usual IT functions and aspects such as cyber security, his domain also includes operational technology – the kit used across the business in areas such as treatment works to control and monitor water and wastewater. Bringing these two functions together brings benefits to its approach to cyber security and to collect vital data in the cloud that allows Northumbrian Water to use machine learning algorithms to learn, and to predict when bits of kit are going to fail. For example, Northumbrian can now predict sewage pump failure in eight out of ten cases, he says. Watson retained his role of transformation programme director, and he and his team have just finished delivery of new platforms to support customer engagement. ey are now about to deploy the first phase of intelligent asset management. WHO KNEW? What bit of tech would you like for your birthday? I'm going to go with a bit of work tech – if someone was to deliver me a fully functioning digital twin I would embrace them, I think. What technology couldn't you do without? My noise cancelling headphones. I'm up and down quite a bit on the train, and I find it really helpful being able to concentrate. Business hero? When I worked for GE, Jack Welch was there. And what I really admired about him was his consistency of message, and his laser focus on business improvement. Today, I can't point to someone and say, 'that's my business hero' because I think the business heroes are the 'servant leaders' who are quietly getting on with things and enabling their people to do great things. at's the style I'm trying to emulate. What did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to be a footballer, and then when I realised that I wasn't fast enough for that, I wanted to be a PE teacher. Tottenham is my team. What do you do to switch off? I go for long runs. I've just run the London Marathon. I had done one before, the Stockholm Marathon, and I've also done a couple of triathlons. Do you have a prized possession? Family photos. I have four kids aged 22, twins aged 18, and 17. ree girls and a boy. // What we're trying to become is the fastest learning water company on the globe. And having the digital signals that allow us to quickly pick up on the effects of climate change, or the impact on customers, is why we have that ambition // " e core team is 170, and then on transformation we've got about another 150 people. 'Innovation' we don't hire people for, because we've made that everyone's job," he explains. In addition, as the person responsible for driving innovation across the business, he instigated and is the sponsor of Northumbrian Water's highly successful Innovation Festival at Newcastle race course, where last year 2,000 people attended from 500 different organisations. e third annual event takes place from 8 to 12 July and there are plans afoot to introduce a spin-off in September. e festival provides an ideal vehicle for design sprints, which the organisation uses to try to solve complex problems. A proposal for a new digital underground map of utility infrastructure was one outcome from one of last year's sprints. "We had BT, Northern Gas Networks, Northern Powergrid and ourselves in the tent. We built three areas of Newcastle on this underground map, because we just wanted to know if we could do it. After the festival, we went out and with Sunderland City Council and Ordnance Survey built an underground map of the area. And we've taken that to government and we're very pleased they are funding the next stage." It has now been announced that the government's geospatial commission is set to create a digital map of the UK's pipe network. He cites the success of the innovation festival as one of his key milestones since joining Northumbrian Water. In two events alone it has resulted in taking 76 ideas back into the business. Another major highlight and a key staging post on the transformation programme is the rollout of a new customer system. e old one had 24 years on the clock, and while it was still functioning, the number of support staff who knew about it was rapidly diminishing. " e catalyst was technology replacement, but we turned it into transformation of the customer experience, with a new CRM and billing system, omni-channel customer engagement platform, home calls, tweets and chat messaging," he explains. As a result, customers can now be offered more flexible payment options, and when they ring up their water provider it will recognise their phone number and pull up previous engagement and account history. He admits it's not revolutionary – but changing any billing system is a huge undertaking and it's always a relief when it's over and working well. "We still have more work to do with our own internal teams, and we can go further in delivering an even better customer experience, but we absolutely have the right platforms in place to do that right now." 13 ISSUE 03 MAY/2019

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