Utility Week - authoritative, impartial and essential reading for senior people within utilities, regulators and government
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/671860
People & Opinion Utility Week community UTILITY WEEK | 29TH APRIL - 5TH MAY 2016 | 7 "Peers should listen to the manifesto commitment of this government and respect it; that is normal practice, as I understand it" Energy minister Andrea Leadsom on the "interference" from the House of Lords by attempting to scrap the government's plans to close the Renewables Obligation (RO) scheme a year early This week we profile Krishna Morker, water quality team leader with Yorkshire Water and one of the Institute of Water's Rising Stars of 2016. What was your first job? A laboratory demonstrator at Lancaster University. How did you come to join your company? I had just finished a gap year travelling aer a short post-doctoral position at Lancaster University and saw a large recruitment drive for a sewerage technician role in the developer services team at Yorkshire Water to facilitate the staff needs for "The Big Transfer". How long have you been with them? Five years and three months. Rising Stars profile Krishna Morker, Yorkshire Water What has been your best achievement since joining? It is difficult to pinpoint just one! My top three include securing the role of water quality scientist in 2013, my secondment to the Drinking Water Inspectorate in 2014, and achieving chartered scientist and rising star status with the Institute of Water. What preconception about your company did you find was most wrong? I thought the Water Quality Department had an in-house laboratory. We don't. We used to, however we have been outsourc- ing to an external laboratory for many years now. Who would play you in the film of your life? Parminder Nagra. What's your favourite film and TV programme? Film: Pride and Prejudice. TV programme: The Apprentice. What would you do if you ruled the world? First, I'd like to be powerful enough to resolve world hunger or certainly go some way to feeding the poorest people around the world. Then I'd like to turn into a nomadic traveller, experiencing the different cul- tures and cuisines the world has to offer. What's your favourite joke? Most work stories my dad regales around the dinner table; only they are fact, not fiction. He has a way of telling them which I suppose is a little lost in translation but hilarious nonetheless. Do you have a message for the industry? The water industry is con- stantly evolving. With the move towards a competitive trading environment it is crucial that companies work together, encouraging greater collaboration in order to share operational best practice and learning. While some competition is necessary to breed innova- tion and to drive change, the community and heart of the industry, which has always focused on providing an exceptional service despite challenging circumstances, should not change. Strong inter-company relationships are the key to a sustainable and successful industry future. Find out more about the Institute of Water's Rising Stars programme at: www.instituteofwater.org. uk/rising-stars/ The closing stages of a thorough investigation SSE welcomed the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) inquiry from the outset and almost two years on we welcome its focus on doing things better for customers. We're fully behind the vast majority of remedies proposed in this far-reaching enquiry. Rolling back some RMR [Retail Market Review] rules to encourage in- novation and individualisation makes sense in the new, smart, energy world. Extending Midata to allow customers access to tai- lored information on price com- parison websites and improving the governance of industry codes and the relationship between Ofgem and Decc will all ultimately make life easier and simpler for customers. But we mustn't lose sight of the fact that the market has changed dramatically since the inquiry started almost two years ago. More than 30 suppliers are now competing vigorously on price, products and customer service. There's also an unprece- dented pipeline of technologi- cal change with smart meters, Midata, Project Nexus and faster switching – to name a few. Supportive as we are of the majority of the CMA's remedies, there are, however, a small num- ber of areas which SSE believes need revisiting ahead of the Final Report in June. As it stands, the current remedy design is impractical, incomplete and very complicated. It needs to be linked to a wide range of tariffs, not just dis- counted fixed term; it should fully factor in all costs, not exclude key variables such as the capac- ity mechanism; it must include additional costs for serving pre- payment meter customers; and must have a sensible approach to wholesale costs that manages the volatility of the market rather than being based on a single day, as is currently proposed. Dr Richard Westoby, director of retail economics, SSE To read the full blog, visit: http:// bit.ly/1WHBhhR Blog