Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
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Ben Jeffs Chief executive, Market Operator Services Limited It is no secret that the water market is going through a period of intense transformation, and fundamental to this change has been Market Operator Services Limited (MOSL). But MOSL itself has also changed a great deal since it was first established, and chief executive Ben Jeffs has played an integral part. As recently as 2015, the MOSL did not exist at all. When Jeffs was chosen to head up the fledgling company, it employed just a handful of people and had not yet taken over from its beleaguered predecessor, Open Water Markets Limited. "We've built a whole business from scratch, whilst planning, mobilising, building, testing, and implementing, all in parallel," says Jeffs. MOSL had to pull together many different companies with different strategies and starting points. And it has had to do this in a way that joins up the policy intent from Defra with the policy implementation from Ofwat. But Jeffs says that, while these challenges have been tough, they have been successfully overcome, leaving MOSL in Machine learning – consultancy view Machine learning is poised to transform the now-booming renewables industry, transforming asset management by reducing costs along the value chain, enabling better performance and mitigating risks, particularly in health and safety. Such a transformation will deliver efficiencies that will improve the cost of renewables in comparison to less sustainable forms of energy. One clear application of such technology is remote condition monitoring. Improvements in drone technology, such as rapid improvements in camera and remote sensing technology and controls systems mean previous manual inspections can now be undertaken by drone. This is set to reduce the cost of operating and maintaining renewable energy. Moving into the mid-term future, we see huge potential for fully-automated and indeed autonomous renewable energy value chains, with drones playing a central role. Thomas Hurst, senior consultant, Energy and Climate Change, Arup Kate Jarritt, associate director, Business Performance and Asset Management, Arup Machine learning is set to be one of the topics discussed in the 'making innovation business as usual' debate at 11:15 on the Network Theatre on 23 May at Utility Week Live. For more information, visit: www.utilityweeklive.co.uk good shape to operate the market. "We've already got quite a good starting point for the new market, just in the way in which we've collaborated to get the market open. "We've got an organisation that is moving from being in programme-mode – using lots of contract labour in the senior roles – into creating the permanent leadership team that will take the business forward," says Jeffs, although he himself has announced he will leave in the summer of 2017. But the journey doesn't end here. One of the big challenges will be how to preserve MOSL as a market operator that is supporting a regime where there is self- regulation. A danger, Jeffs warns, is that people will see MOSL as a "pseudo-regulator", when its role is, in fact, to facilitate the operation of the market and keep regulatory intervention as a truly last resort. For Jeffs, the job is not yet done. "Until my successor is found, there is a really big job still to be done here. I'll start looking for my next role when I've had a bit of a break at the end of this one." Ben Jeffs is speaking at Utility Week Live on retail competition and whether the consumer has already won. This is at 10:40 on the Keynote Theatre on 23 May. For more information, visit: www. utilityweeklive.co.uk www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | May 2017 | 33