Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
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"We believe that working with third party stakeholders is going to become increasingly common; it needs to be delivered in a more dynamic way." Jo Harrison, Director of Asset Management, United Utilities THE SPEAKERS "As an industry we've lost some key suppliers because they weren't able to take on the risk they ended up with… we've got to bring people up the value chain." Richard Price, Strategic Projects Director, Bristol Water "If we are truly committed to taking service levels to new heights, we have to think broader than just asset solutions." Matt Wheeldon, Director, Asset Strategy and Compliance, Wessex Water "We focus a huge amount on cost but we don't think enough about value… it is quite hard to think differently, but we as a sector should welcome the opportunity." John Bentley, Head of Strategic Investment, Severn Trent To Take Away Water companies' plans for PR19 will need to be focused on outcomes rather than outputs, with utilities expected to show flexibility in how they approach the challenge of their common and bespoke performance commitments Non-asset solutions should be considered before solutions that involve building new assets, with catchment approaches, interventions to change customer behaviour and data analytics particularly likely to feature The supply chain's expertise should be brought in at the earliest possible stage to ensure collaborative solutions are found. Risk should be shared with the supply chain, but not dumped on them, via contractual arrangements Customer need should be at the heart of companies' plans, with all proposals viewed through the prism of affordability Natural capital and value to the community will both need to be considered alongside Totex calculations when deciding on preferred options analogy of a mission to the moon, and said that if asset solutions were the large first stage rocket that helped escape the earth's atmosphere, then data analytics would be the targeted lunar module that could help negotiate the precise final leg of the journey. "Arguably, some service standards will not be possible to meet without a better understanding of data to support decision-making," said Wheeldon. The conference heard from several speakers about the 'Totex hierarchy' of interventions that would be required to meet performance targets – considering solutions that make assets redundant, that operate assets more effectively or that extend asset life, before the final resort of building new assets. Expertise from the supply chain would need to be brought in at an early stage to help these options be considered fully and come up with collaborative answers, rather than at the final stage where assets are being planned and built, it was agreed. Richard Price, Strategic Projects Director at Bristol Water, said that it was important that water companies adopted a properly collaborative, risk-sharing ap- proach with the supply chain in solving AMP7 challenges and that this does not take the form of water companies "dump- ing risk" on Tier 1 contractors. "It's important to allocate asset life- cycle risks to the party most capable of managing them – and 'allocate' does not mean 'dump'," said Price. "As an industry we've lost some key suppliers because they weren't able to take on the risk they ended up with. I'm a firm believer that you get the supply chain that you deserve… we've got to bring people up the value chain." WWT's Water Industry Asset Manage- ment conference was held in Birmingham on May 10th and was sponsored by MMI Engineering and Servelec Technologies. 16 | JUNE 2018 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk The Talk: Events SPONSORED BY