Is this the real life? Or is this just fantasy?

With the Cunliffe Review, the Water White Paper and a change of Minister, there has been a lot of discussion around the future of our water systems in the UK over the past 12 months. Given this, it seems World Water Tech has come around at just the right time to reflect on what we see ahead of us and how we go about achieving our ambitions. Entering it’s 15th year, this event is always well attended and generates good discussions from a range of stakeholders about the world of water and where our focus should lie.

The event opened with Minister Emma Hardy outlining her 2050 vision for UK water. This imagines a closed loop system, digitally enabled with sensors, AI powered analytics and cyber physical workforces working ahead of issues and proactively managing risks. All driven by a strategy of networks, treatment facilities, rivers and customers working in harmony to drive maximum value from water and protect our planet from harm. Sounds great doesn’t it?

The interesting thing about this to me is that if you look at each of the component parts of this vision, we can see a route through to the goal. Technology is moving at a vast pace with new capabilities and capacity becoming affordable at scale daily. We are starting with £104bn worth of investment to improve our assets and put in new ones to build capacity and performance. We will soon reopen the discussion on maintenance and efficient operations of our existing systems to ensure the right level of investment and management is in place to meet demand and provide resilience. We also have some of the world’s best expertise in the water industry. So if a lot of the pieces are already there, this should be something that can become reality.

So what could stop it?

The rest of the event covered some of the challenges we face. Pace of innovation. How do we get quicker and bolder in validation and adoption? It is widely accepted we are a sector slow to move in this space, lacking in the agility some other equally life critical industries have. Political will. Elections bring a focus that is the furthest from long term strategy and outcomes, and all about the short term wins and commitments that will get your name back on the ballot. With conflicting national agendas, moving at pace when making such fundamental structural changes to how things work will no doubt take time. Longer than planned and slower than is probably required. The silver tsunami. The loss of vital domain expertise, experience and skill continues. This will only exacerbate the effect of trying to speed up delivery and adapt to new systems thinking and approaches to running water systems effectivly.

Given this, you may think the 2050 vision put forward sounds more like fantasy. The good news is if we can see what might stop us getting to where we want to be, we may still have enough time to do something about it. As a sector we will have to find ways to grow, develop and attract enough talent to deliver the work required to upgrade our systems and run them. We will have to focus on developing partnerships and driving speed to value from innovation and technology. We need to build a quality, fast paced and purposeful delivery machine that spans regions and moves all aspects of our water systems forwards. We have to also engage with government and the new regulator to get the regional planning bodies stood up and start building the plans that deliver the connected outcomes the national infrastructure demands.

Each of us has an apart to play to make this fantasy a reality. At Ipsum, we have already started building our talent machine, we have developed technical frameworks and career pathways to develop the best engineers and technicians. We are building partnerships and bringing innovative new solutions to the UK that have proven value elsewhere in the world. We are working with our clients to develop ways of working that expedite delivery without risking quality or performance.

There are big hurdles to overcome yes. But I choose to believe though that we have the drive and motivation to achieve this vision. We can, if as a sector, we get organised and deploy all of the skills, experience and capabilities we have across all aspects of the UK water community. But the time is now to make a start and pace up quickly. 2050 will be here before you know…