Water and Effluent Treatment Magazine
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/816363
MAY 2017 WET NEWS 13 Ben Jeffs Chief executive, Market Operator Services 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 in that transformation. Although he says he could not have done it without the counsel and support of MOSL's chairman Andrew Pinder, who sadly died on 9 April. As recently as 2015, the market operator 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 has evolved through the programme, and we entered the market with many of the building blocks in place for us to operate in that market." The challenges that come with setting up an entire market and company are, unsurprisingly, abundant. MOSL has had to pull together many different types of companies with different strategies and starting points to get them over the line together on 1 April. 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 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." Along the journey to market opening, MOSL has moved from an organisation largely staffed with contractors, to recruiting permanent staff. "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 the organisation in the summer of 2017. Reflective of the organisation's transformation is the brand- new office the company set up for the beginning of the market. "We've tried to align the start of the market with the cultural start of MOSL as the enduring organisation that we want to be." But the journey doesn't end here. One of the big challenges for MOSL in the early days 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