creating a sustainable future for all

Achieving net zero across the whole business is a widely adopted aspiration across the water industry. Management teams, reinforced by regulators, are focused on this goal as a top priority. What does it really mean, and how can we move this target from aspiration to reality? Natalie Gordon and Tom Swanson from Egremont Group discuss the importance of sustainability in the water industry.

What is a sustainable business?

Natalie: ‘Sustainable’ was originally coined as an environmental term — but it’s broader than that now. So, a sustainable business isn’t just one that has a sustainability strategy or considers themselves a ‘green business’. Instead, it’s a business that balances purpose and profit, which means it actively tries to do the best for its customers, its staff, its community and the environment. Water companies are, in many ways, ahead of the thinking here. They already had to consider the impact on their communities and customers. Their operations are rooted in the environment. For the water industry, the opportunity here is to link everything up, to understand, for example, how a clear vision, made tangible throughout the organisation, is implemented via engaged employees using intelligent data to solve problems and implement more effective and efficient processes, in turn having a direct impact on achieving net zero across the business.

Tom: The water industry already has sustainability considerations as an integral part of many practices. All the providers are instrumental in, and at the forefront of efforts to positively impact sustainability – not only do their strategic plans consider future scenarios and investments to ensure water availability and security, they are playing a pivotal role in a wide range of areas from biodiversity through asset optimisation and energy efficiency.

From Field Teams to Board members, decisions are aligned with preserving and maintaining the precious natural resources available, and dealing with the increasingly frequent and severe impacts of climate change.

Effecting sustainable change. What is that — and how easy is it to do?

Natalie: No change is sustainable if the change is mandated by the leaders and the people most affected are simply told what to do. People need to engage with the need for change and contribute to the process of change. And now seems to be as good a time as any. We’re finding that as businesses come out of the worst of the pandemic, they’re saying ‘You know what? The past 18 months have forced us to fundamentally change a number of our practices. So why don’t we look at what else we need to fundamentally change in our operating model — and the impact that can have?’

To do that, you have to bring the workforce and leadership team together. You have to create a culture where the employee voice is heard and where top-down desire meets bottom-up momentum. This creates a framework where teams are trusted and gives them the tools and skills to problem-solve and drive change.

Tom: Those empowered teams also need the right data in the right hands at the right moments to effect sustainable change. The industry has a proven track record of deploying telemetry and gathering data, increasingly facilitated by a wealth of cost effective sensors and smart solutions, so the first step to data enabled change is already in place. Sustainable change will only be possible if this intelligence is exploited more effectively and extensively. For management who have invested heavily in a data analytics teams, impatience is growing, they have a data lake and an analyst team but desperately need to operationalise insight to facilitate change.

The next step is enabling a more pervasive use of AI and analytics in everyday business operations, intelligence augmentation if you will. This way smart solutions can be exploited to make non-complex decisions based on intelligence provided by the sensors in the system, freeing up the human workforce to make complex and risk-critical decisions also enabled by the data. It’s best not to think of sustainable change as a large business transformation programme, but as an immersive way of working that constantly seeks to learn and improve. It’s about getting the most from your data and your people. It always has been. The difference now is the emphasis on intelligent use of data. Effective sustainable change becomes correlated to the pervasiveness of AI within your business.

It takes trust to really use the data available. By striving to build intelligent models of their own systems to take better care of the assets, the business is embedding sustainable practice into their central operations.  This will be instrumental in achieving net zero, better lifecycle management and a better way of modelling risk systemically.

So, what things can companies do to be a force for good?

Tom: The water industry is in a unique position, it is responsible for the main life sustaining resource. Yet all too often consumers only hear about the industry’s role in their lives when they see maintenance teams handing out sandbags, mopping up floods and sewage spills or setting up standpipes in the street when the water runs dry. The industry has an opportunity to adopt a  systems leadership role, and create a position of increased influence where the individual networks come together to work with planning regulators, environmental agencies and even climate activists to plan for a sustainable future for the whole United Kingdom.

This will only be possible through collaborative innovation. At any given time, most water companies will be running a flood prevention or leakage pilot. Why not share the data from these individual pilots to provide a joined up view of what needs to be done? Putting shareholder demands aside, surely this is a target worth reaching for.

Natalie: Looking to the near future, no one would disagree that water treatment plants will pivot into energy generation. This is the accepted wisdom, yet how will it happen without industry wide collaboration to set out the roadmap and political backing through legislation to ensure the change happens? Not every interested party has the data to provide a holistic picture of the problems we are all facing, it is time to start influencing the discussion at a higher level.

Is sustainability worth it for a business?

Natalie: Is saving the planet worth it? Is creating a better working environment for your staff worth it? Is delivering what your customers want worth it? Is helping your community to thrive worth it? We think so and the water industry is uniquely positioned to be role models for all.

This article first appeared in the Autumn Edition of the Institute of Water

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