Water & Wastewater Treatment

www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | MAY 2020 | 5 COMMENT Vital to keep spending taps on From their engineers safeguarding supply at Britain's new emergency hospitals, to the bill reductions they're giving nurses, water companies are stepping up to the plate with their coronavirus response. As we report in a special feature on pages 18-19, firms have wasted no time in switching staff to home working, re-organising operations to cope with a growing number of absences and tooling up key front-line operatives to keep supply uninterrupted. Water workers have yet to receive a public round of applause but the sector has certainly proven its resilience and thoroughly deserved its pat on the back from Ofwat. But where do we go from here? Water companies, like all UK businesses, are facing so many unknowns – many extremely scary. The Office for Budget Responsibility is forecasting the economy could shrink by 35 per cent and 2 million people could lose their jobs. The domestic sector won't dry up of course, but the pressure from bad debts as households struggle and businesses close will hit the sector hard. Also weighing heavily on the sector will be the fate of its supply chain – firms it contracts to build and maintain its assets, many of them featured in The Leaders 2020 in this issue. Alongside the extraordinary efforts the sector is making to respond to the coronavirus, it is also continuing to meet all of those crucial and pressing improvement targets, of which the journey to net zero carbon is one (see page 8-9). To achieve these targets, fruitful and innovative partnerships with the supply chain are essential. The need for mutual support is vital for government too. Investment in water infrastructure will be a prime vehicle for boosting the economy to help pull the country out of recession. If water firms can keep payments to suppliers flowing, perhaps by bringing forward work that could be quicker to get in the ground, it will keep people in jobs – the people whose efforts will be critical for water companies in the tough months ahead. Alec Peachey, content director, WWT CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE DRINKING WATER QUALITY LEAKS AND BURSTS SEWER NETWORKS WASTEWATER QUALITY WATER RESOURCES WWT is focusing on six core content themes. Look out for the illustrative tabs that highlight specific areas of the industry. between companies, regulators and gov- ernment. At times like this trust between all parties is critical to people having the confidence to do the right thing – we can- not afford for it to be otherwise." Bishop agreed the priority must be on delivering vital services to customers and the duty of care for companies' staff and supply chain, but he pointed out the sec- tor needs to know that the regulator will support them. Ofwat's Fletcher wrote to companies in March saying incentives and penalties "should not get in the way of effective prioritisation in the interests of custom- ers". She stressed that water companies did not need to "wait for our approval before implementing prioritised working arrangements". Extra time for CMA The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has been granted a six-month-extension to allow the government department to redetermine the business plans of four water companies. Ofwat has accepted that the workload involved with four referrals – from Anglian, Bristol, Northumbrian and Yorkshire – plus the disruption caused by the pandemic, meant that the initial timeframe of six months to com- plete the investigation was unrea- sonable. It has agreed to extend the deadline to 19 March 2021. In Focus: How water is dealing with the coronavirus 18-19; and Adopting a crisis-ready mentality 20-21 single visualisation platform. This will provide a virtual model of the physi- cal assets across the network referred to as a digital twin. Through the use of machine learning and artificial intelli- gence, clustering data sets and removing false positives, this will inform asset and operational decision making. Analysts in Yorkshire Water will be able to prioritise repairs instantly, ena- bling leaks to be repaired quicker and reducing water lost.

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