Water & Wastewater Treatment

WWT PUMP SUPPLEMENT DECEMBER 2017 5 but how their priorities, for example around asset resilience, map against what manufacturers are able to offer. The uncertainty created by the five-year AMP cycle can be a source of frustration for manufacturers, admits Lewis. "A five-year cycle is fine if you know what is going to happen within that five- year cycle - you can invest or divest your resources accordingly. But when you have that uncertainty coming up, it doesn't help anybody in terms of having a sustained vision of your business." He adds that the system of framework agreements used by the water companies does not provide any additional comfort, because it does not come with a guarantee of any quantity of work. "You can win a framework, but that's just the ticket to the dance. It's great that you've got it, but it's more of a supplier agreement these days than something that guarantees work at the end of it." One of the key areas where the BPMA adds value for its members is interpreting UK and EU regulation and lobbying government on regulatory issues. For this reason, Brexit potentially represents a considerable headache for the industry, where many manufacturers have cross- border supply chains, facilities, operations and sales. With the outcome of Brexit highly uncertain and a lack of information forthcoming from the government, Lewis says that ensuring consistent standards will be crucial. Pump manufacturers will not want there to be variations in the standards required when selling to the UK market as opposed to the EU. In particular, he wants to see clarity on whether CE marking – which certifies that a product complies with EU safety and environmental requirements – will continue to be accepted in the UK as evidence of compliance with its standards. Moreover, EU energy regulations are becoming more sophisticated, with rules which are progressing towards testing the efficiency of how pumps, drives and motors interact as a set, rather than in isolation; the UK will need to decide whether its market follows suit, and if so, how these regulations will be enforced. "There is so little guidance on what this will all look like a'er March 2019," says Lewis. "These are issues of safety and product quality, and from an engineering and manufacturing perspective, it's going to take time to make any adaptation that's required. At the moment it's the European bodies that create the regulations and we in the UK are a dominant part of that conversation. But we probably won't be able to sit in those conversations going forward, so we will need to work out what impact that will have on our local market. There are a lot of unknowns right now, and that's the problem." With his two-year presidency of the BPMA running until November 2019, and as the UK leader of pump manufacturer with a global reach, Lewis will be keeping a closer watch than most on how the UK separation from the EU progresses. "You can win a frame- work, but that's just the ticket to the dance - it's more of a supplier agreement, as it doesn't guarantee any work at the end of it."

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