Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
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www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | FEBRUARY 2020 | 13 and cons to being one of each. What I've noticed from being at the WOC end of the spectrum is that we're able to get momen- tum into initiatives very quickly. Funda- mentally, all of our decision makers sit in one building and I can ask for a decision straight away. That's the sort of pace that I think is really important to early stage innovators. "Where we might struggle is when it comes to scaling activity. That's probably where the WASCs have the advantage of their own scale. I'd love to see us collabo- rate in a very deliberate fashion to create and engineer a growth journey for innova- tors through the industry and practically work at what that could look like." With the conference taking place before Ofwat's decision to launch a £200 million innovation competition was con- firmed (see more on this on page 4), there was also debate around how the regulator will measure innovation as part of this. One audience member asked the ques- tion: 'How will Ofwat measure you on innovation and how as water companies do you measure your own innovation?' Justin Bailey, head of innovation at Severn Trent, commented: "Ofwat will want some way of measuring success from that fund. We've all got our own ways of measuring innovation based on whatever best practice we've followed. There are two common ways of measuring it across the companies. That's what is needed and that's what has been done in the energy and gas industries. I think the energy and gas companies were very hon- est about it. Their funds started some time ago and it took them at least a five-year period before they were all measuring it in the same way. We can't afford to take that length of time. To get to a common way of measuring innovation and still incentivis- ing collaboration is really important." Later on, the panelists were asked what should be priortised in order to speed up innovation. Bailey responded by saying there was a need for a 'common needs' document in the sector. He said: "Fundamentally un- derstanding what the needs of each indi- vidual company are in the short-term and getting a common needs document across the water industry and working towards that will without doubt speed it up." He also highlighted the importance of having funding for projects that take longer than five years, adding: "We are generally bound by a five-year regulatory cycle, and it's very hard to justify spend- ing money beyond a certain amount for the future. That's why I'm really looking forward to seeing how this £200m fund plays out." Thomas added: "I think there's a case to be made around almost ringfencing areas where innovation can be brought in and the performance of an area could be allowed to fluctuate within reason- able bounds. You've got to allow room for failure." Paul Gaskin, research and innova- tion manager - Dwr Cymru Welsh Water, remarked: "You've got to bring people along with you. If you've trialled technol- ogy and it works, then get the people who are going to use that tech to actually want to use it." Later on, Eliane Algaard, water director at Northumbrian Water gave a presentation entitled 'Tech + People – the perfect formula for an innovative future'. Algaard told the audience about some of the work that the water company has been doing to highlight innovation including its annual Innovation Festival, which sees attendees combining to tackle some of the biggest challenges faced by society and the environment today. She also talked about the importance of the company's staff in helping to enable innovation. Algaard said: "To achieve our goals we don't only need in- novative ideas, the right structure, process or technology – we also need to develop our workforce and to make sure that they have the right skillset and knowledge. "As part of our workforce strategy we welcomed 23 apprentices into the water team in November. This represents our biggest single intake of apprentices (about three per cent) and in the next two years we're looking at adding 10 per cent of our workforce to be apprentices." In a straw poll carried out at the event attendees were asked to vote on what's the most important thing to invest in to drive innovation. 47 per cent said people, 41 per cent said technology and the re- maining 12 per cent said both were equal. An exclusive innovation survey carried out by WWT in association with UKWIR recently highlighted that senior bosses believe they are doing more to create a culture of innovation than their teams do - and both agreed that not enough is being done to incentivise staff to come up with new ideas. You can find out what water company leaders had to say about innovation in 2019 by downloading the report from the Resource Centre at wwtonline.co.uk The WWT Water Industry Innova- tion Conference was held in Birming- ham on 5 December 2019 and was sponsored by So•ware AG; 8-Power; AECOM; ATI; Galliford Try; I-PHYC; Novotek; Watr; and Xylem. Co-sponsors: Caption