Water & Wastewater Treatment

14 | february 2015 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk Industry leader "People have talked about having a national grid for water. you'll never get that, but local grids make a lot of sense." Colin Skellett, Wessex Water compliance - even with the new directive - on the south coast, but the north coast will be a challenge," he muses. "If you've been to Weston or Burnham, you'll know that the sea is not exactly transparent, there's a lot of silt that moves up and down the estuary, and a lot of agricultural run-off as well. What we have to do is to make sure that if there are any problems with bathing water quality, then none of those problems are down to our sewerage systems. So we're putting in additional storage, additional treatment, so that anything that's being dis- charged from the sewer network does not have an impact on bathing water quality." Real-time monitoring Wessex were the first water company to make real-time information about coastal sewage overflows available on their website, so beach users could check on the likely bathing water conditions before visiting the seaside. Extend- ing this kind of real-time monitoring and information throughout the water network is another priority initiative for the next five years. "We still don't know enough about our sys- tems," says Skellett. "We know a lot more than we used to know, but we still more frequently than not rely on customers to tell us that's something's happened - 'I haven't got any water' or 'my pressure's gone down'. Real time monitoring will enable us to know about these things before they actually happen, which is what customers would expect. So that's part of it, but we're also doing a lot on the way we give customers information. Customer expectations have been transformed in the last ten years, in the way the customer expects to be kept in- formed and involved. So I think there's a whole ra„ of things around real time monitoring, real time information, but also presenting that information in a way that's customer-friendly." The only aspect of Wessex's business plan which has been scaled back as a result of the price review was its intention to install water meters in the majority of houses when there is a change of occupancy. Skellett says he still believes this is the right approach, but the company will now only be able to do this on a more limited scale a„er Ofwat queried the cost of the plan. "We were keen to introduce metering on change of occupancy, because it's a logical time to do it. It is a time when people make choices – if you move into a house, you make a choice knowing whether that property is metered or not. So we were keen to do this to speed up the growth of metering. We're not going to get to universal metering, because some things will be too difficult, but we ought to be able to get to the high 90s over time. At the current rate of progress that will be 20 or 30 years, but it would be better if we could do it faster." Retail opportunities In preparation for the advent of retail competi- tion in 2017, Wessex Water has created a new company – Water2business – together with Bristol Water. Skellett says that not only will the new company be "totally separate" for reasons of compliance, but that it will have the ethos of "a small start-up commercial business" allowing it to be "fleet of foot" and compete with new entrants to the water retail sector. The business will initially concentrate on retaining existing business customers through good service rather than aggressively going a„er business across the country, al- though Skellett says that there is the potential for growth long term. "I think the experience in Scotland shows that there is not going to be a lot of competition on price, because margins are so small, but the competition will be on service, and added value services. So for us, it's first of all focusing on the business customers that we have, and making sure that they get really good service from us, that they've got account managers and we understand clearly their business needs. It then provides some opportunities to grow, although I don't see us splashing lots of money around trying to pick up every supermarket in the country or whatever, because the amount of money that you might make out of that is small." Much has changed during Skellett's 26-year tenure, and he is still going strong at the age of 69. So what keeps him motivated in his role? "It's great fun," he answers. "This is a wonderful industry, we provide an abso- lutely fundamental public health service - and there are always new things hap- pening. There are big new challenges, like climate change, and the way cus- tomers respond to us is growing and changing. I love the way we're able to communicate with people now through social media. There's always something new - so as long as there's something new, I enjoy doing it." By James Brockett above: a diagram of Wessex Water's water supply grid, its biggest project which will be completed in aMP6. a new pipeline will link existing supply infrastructure in the north of the region with that on the south coast

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