Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/696123
6 | JULY 2016 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk Comment T he past year has seen Ofwat placed under a new duty to ensure the resilience of the water sector, and a task group under the chairmanship of Waterwise's Jacob Tompkins has explored the definition, scope and challenges of building resilience. The threat of climate change and more extreme weather events has placed a growing spotlight on the extent to which the sector can maintain and restore service in the face of unexpected challenges. Resilience was one of the key themes at the recent Utility Week Live conference and exhibition in Birmingham, where a panel session on the topic provided food for thought. One aspect that came through loud and clear was that increasing What price resilience? resilience is not simply about designing water and wastewater systems that have a reduced risk of failure. Resilience is more than this because it is all about the response and recovery when failure occurs – it can be thought of as 'bouncebackability' or making systems 'safe to fail' according to Professor David Butler of Exeter University. Resilience as a property of a system needs therefore to be distinguished from the performance of that system. But a troubling thought that follows from this is that cost-benefit analysis may not be reliable with resilience projects. While everybody agrees that more resilient networks and systems are a good thing, there is a real difficulty is establishing the level of protection that needs to be invested in – and basing a cost-benefit calculation on a '1 in 50 year drought' or a '1 in 100 year storm' is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, climate change means that these climatic events are becoming much more frequent, so the risk may be much greater than your calculations assume. Second, it's possible that your investment has made the system less likely to fail but not done anything to alter the James brockett eDItor JamesBrockett@fav-house.com Twitter: @wwtmag Industry view sponsored by keith Hayward, sales and marketing manager, Hydro International Wastewater Changing the way equipment and services are procured is essential if we are going to drive progress in the UK water industry - but how well equipped are we to take the steps necessary? This question was at the heart of WWT's Round Table on Procurement and its role in Totex and asset optimisation. Hydro International supported the debate, because we believe making procurement 'fit for purpose' is a matter that must engage the whole supply chain, and not just the water companies themselves. The discussion opened with some hard-hitting facts: Most people understand and desire the benefits of whole-life costing to optimise operating The Procurement Conundrum efficiency and streamline maintenance. However, our industry is constrained in the straitjacket of cyclicality and deeply-embedded capital cost-centred contracting. Anecdotally, we heard from the Future Water Association and British Water that the start to AMP6 has been amongst the slowest ever. It's also clear that, while water companies are beginning to share and incentivise a Totex approach with Tier 1 contractors, that is mostly where it stops. Go beyond that, and contracts are still placed on lowest cost rather than best lifecycle value. True, the seeds of AMP6 may have been sown too long ago for more than the first green shoots of Totex to be sprouting. And there's no doubting the commitment of the industry and especially of water company senior management to it. This includes changing mindsets across organisations to think first about 'sweating the assets' - optimising operations rather than looking for a new build solution. Still, solving the procurement conundrum is essential to progress. It's vital to recruiting and retaining talented people in our industry, to enabling the adoption of innovative ideas and processes, as well as for energy efficiency. So, now is the time to stop talking around the issues, and instead to ask: what are we going to do about it? In spite of the constraints, what can we do to adapt procurement, costing and contracting approaches and ensure they help deliver the outcomes we all want to see for water customers? There may be a number of initiatives that can be developed and some were touched on briefly during our discussion. We may need to look to other infrastructure sectors for best practice models. Above all, collaboration should be the watchword for the future. This is a challenge for the whole industry to own and it will take time, and leadership to work out. For the full Round Table report turn to page 10. consequences when failure happens. For this reason, if failure of a particular asset would represent a catastrophe, then a much higher level of protection may be justified. For example, the Dutch have determined that some key assets in the Netherlands must be protected against a 1-in-10,000-year storm, an almost unimaginable event. Catastrophic scenarios might be low probability, but they are very high cost: it is estimated that the cost of a total failure of water supply to London would be £7-10BN a week. But over-specifying investment projects cannot be the answer everywhere – so what is the missing ingredient? In the case of water networks, it may be that the behaviour and response of customers is crucial. Customers could be mobilised not only to respond sensibly to a crisis - for example by minimising water use in a drought – but to take preventative measures to build resilience, such as rainwater harvesting and storage at home. Rather than the big spending project, it may be that small actions by individuals and communities could be the way to make water supplies in any one locality more resilient.