Water & Wastewater Treatment

www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | ocTober 20 | 49 Digging deeper The right lever makes the difference T he water industry sees itself as unique, and so it is. But so are many other industries: that does not stop them learning from each other so every industry can become more efficient and better able to deliver the best product at the best price. Learning from the experts is just one of the ways that eight 2 O, the alliance tasked with delivering Thames Water's sixth Asset Manage- ment Plan (AMP6) aims to make a step change in managing and streamlining the programme. The eight-strong alliance combines expertise and best practice from multiple sectors to think differently at every level, involving and engaging all parties to take a long term view. The partners alongside Thames Water include two design and build joint ventures made up of Skanska, MWH, Balfour Beatty and Costain, Veo- lia, Atkins plus MWH as the programme manager and IBM as the partner facilitating technology and innovation. Forming eight 2 O two years ahead of AMP6 is part of Thames Water's plan to ensure they can deliver better value for customers by maximising their partners' opportunities to develop innova- tive, sustainable solutions across the board in line with the new TOTEX approach. The investment in transition is enabling the team to be better prepared for AMP6. A signifi- cant number of schemes are already in design and initial consultation with the supply chain aims to get them on board early to level the profile of activity across year one, preventing the traditional slow start. eight 2 O wants to do things differently and it started by bringing together members of the supply chain more than a year before AMP6 was due to kick off, with the aim of building in their input to planning as well as delivery – and setting them free to use their own expertise to improve delivery. The alliance wants to build in new thinking in the water industry on issues like whole-life costing and sustainability. But it wants to go much further in taking the best from the water industry and elsewhere. The alliance sought ideas from everywhere and that process had its own dangers. That initial discussion with the supply chain resulted Janet Wood, freelance journalist eight 2 O has identified ten levers that will drive efficiency throughout asset lifecycles and is using them to make a step- change in Thames Water's AMP6 programme in 450 responses from the companies involved. Some were simple sales pitches, but many had ideas and experience that might make a real dif- ference to the programme. All had to be assessed – and so did many proposals arising as the mem- bers of eight 2 O settled into what is a deliberately open and ideas-led environment. How could the organisation make sure it called up the most effective ideas and deploy them at scale? Leveraging change To effect this the team assessed the ideas against ten "levers for efficiency", carefully chosen to ensure that leverage was applied throughout the entire project lifecycle – and that of the AMP itself. To deploy those levers effectively each was given its own team. Now new ideas are allotted to a lever, and to a team, which has to assess the proposal not just for what it delivers individually, but also for how frequently it can be deployed across the programme. Those solutions are tested, qualified and become part of a stand- ard toolkit that will be the first thing eight 2 O members reach for when they start a job. Andy Bull is in the eight 2 O core team and has been working with suppliers and he says: "They were great ideas but now we are mapping them on to the programme. Is it credible and feasible? How o›en can you deploy them?" How does it work in practice? Take two levers: standardisation and off-site manufacturing.

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