Institute of Water National Conference Review 2019 by Institute of Water

HOW DISRUPTION IS TRANSFORMING THE WATER SECTOR

REVIEW

T I TA N I C | B E L FA S T 27-28 JUNE 2019

REFLECTIONS AND THANKS It was an absolute honour to host the Institute of Water’s Annual Conference 2019 this year in Belfast. The three days were extremely busy and took a lot of organisation, but it was very rewarding to see so many water sector professionals come together for this event. When I look back, I find it hard to believe how much we managed to fit in! Our Conference attracted around almost 600 people from across the water sector and took place in the dynamic setting of Titanic Belfast, a truly iconic venue – voted one of the world’s leading tourist attractions that leant itself perfectly for the 2019 IOW conference. We explored the theme of ‘disruption’ - how climate change, pollution and the emergence of new technologies are causing ‘disruption’ to populations around the world and how the water sector need to respond. To help us navigate these themes, we had the assistance of distinguished speakers such as Sir John Parker, Chairman of Pennon Group, Leo Johnson, Disruption Lead for PwC, Duncan Tait, President and CEO of Fujitsu EMEIA and Head of Fujitsu UK, John Mahony, Group CEO of ReputationInc and the BBC’s ‘The One Show’ reporter Lucy Siegle, plus many water sector colleagues. Their talks gave us valuable insights into the challenges we face and helped us see how we can meet those challenges and move forward confidently as a sector.

It’s hard to deliver a conference of this scale without the aid of sponsorship and I wish to take this opportunity to once again thank all of the sponsors involved in the conference and our associated events. I also give my thanks to Lynn Cooper and her team at the Institute of Water HQ, Lanyon Group, and my own organising team at NI Water who all worked tirelessly to make this conference happen. I thank the Rising Stars 2019 who took an active part in the Conference and facilitated the sessions. I hope you found this development experience valuable and I wish you the very best in your future career. A personal highlight of the two-day Conference was the President’s Dinner and Awards. It was an honour to host this event in the fabulous setting of Belfast City Hall. This dinner was our opportunity to celebrate the great work that happens across the water sector and I was humbled to meet some of our fellow water practitioners who are so committed to their profession.

attended the conference and they’ve kindly taken the time to write and share their own independent reviews of the conference. For those of you reading this who are yet to experience an Institute of Water conference, I hope this Review gives you a flavour and it encourages you to attend a conference of ours in future. And finally, I thank all the attendees. The energy and enthusiasm that you brought to conference was inspiring and I truly believe that this is what sets the Institute of Water Conferences apart from others. Sara Venning Institute of Water President and Chief Executive of NI Water

We’ve also had help from some of our younger members of IWater in producing this Review: McKenna Robinson and Joshua Graver from Anglian Water, and Michelle Calder from Scottish Water. Each of them

We would like to thank our sponsors. Without them, this conference would not have been possible.

2019 ANNUAL CONFERENCE | REVIEW

THE CONFERENCE – DAY ONE AM

A review by Mckenna Robinson, Optimisation Project Analyst at Anglian Water We were welcomed to the conference by the new president of the Institute of Water and CEO of Northern Ireland Water, Sara Venning. She began by giving us a brief history of the changing times of the industry from the all-male Belfast water commissioners to the truly diverse workforce that we see now. Sir John Parker delivered the opening address, he emphasised how we are the custodians to a finite resource and how critical it is that we preserve water. This can be done through exceptional leadership and embracing the full meaning of change. “Be as you wish to seem” – Socrates. The key theme around reputation resonated through the session. Sir John expressed that privileged leaders must protect the reputation of the water industry and it’s the values of our leaders that are the most important – our actions speak louder than words. As an industry, to be successful in society we must deliver through our people; a leader should encourage, support and develop the people of tomorrow. “Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together”. The keynote speaker, Leo Johnson opened with this Marilyn Munroe quote as he

delivered two very different messages of how artificial intelligence could unlock either a utopian or dystopian future. As AI is accelerating past human intelligence it is causing disruption to existing business models across multiple sectors. A dystopian future with crumbling infrastructure, cyber terror and a lack of water is a real threat to today’s society, with a predicted 140m refugees by 2040 it’s how we act now that will prevent this. Leo expressed that instead to reach a utopian future we need to have a collaborative approach, using innovation and AI to reach our full potential. John Mahony opened with “everything we do, we say and everything our stakeholders say about us defines our reputation”. He reiterated the earlier point that having strong leaders are key and added that our culture and governance are intrinsically linked with reputation being embedded in business strategy. It is important that if we do something wrong, we fix it and make sure that it doesn’t happen again – this is imperative to building our reputation whether as an individual all the way through to the industry as a whole. A pre-conference survey showed that we are all proud to work in the water industry, from this we can build a personal truth so that we can be authentic and impactful in the causes that we fight for. As global issues such as climate change and water scarcity

become more apparent, we need to continue the journey of sustainability so we as an industry prove that we care. John then chaired a panel with Peter Simpson, Richard Flint and Heidi Mottram to continue the discussion on developing reputation. Peter affirmed the point that we all need to do the basics brilliantly if we are to succeed. The session closed with Duncan Tait from Fujitsu discussing digital disruption, with the rise of AI around 70% of jobs that we do today will be changed or gone completely. Quantum technology enables us to complete calculations in seconds that have previously taken decades and the next generation of the internet allows us to have an octillion amount of internet addresses. With billions being spent on cloud technology to increase the speed of running businesses we need to invest in our people through reskilling so that we become futureproof to the everchanging digital landscape. The Q&A with Duncan and Brendan Monaghan further highlighted the need for us to learn from and teach each other so that we can continue to develop a diverse and inclusive workforce. This is enhanced through creative thinking, STEM skills and closing the gender pay gap.

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THE CONFERENCE – DAY ONE PM A review by Michelle Calder, Drainage Analyst, Flooding Investigation Team at Scottish Water The afternoon of Day One of the conference was opened by Charlotte Rhodes, Rising Star for the Welsh Area, who gave a summary of her experiences on the Rising Star programme before introducing Lucy Siegle and Mandhy Senewiratne who presented two opposing viewpoints on one of the most hotly debated topics of recent times, the use of plastics. Lucy, a broadcaster, journalist and author of “Turning the Tide on Plastic” presented the anti-plastic view, though she was keen to point out she is not anti-plastic, or indeed anti anything. Instead, she is pro full disclosure – we should know what is in what we use, understand its impact and change our behaviours accordingly. Mandhy, a sustainability consultant and director at Fyrefly Global then presented the pro-plastic view, or more specifically the pro professional plastics view – arguing that plastics have a place and that rather than limiting or banning their use we should change how we deal with the consequences.

introduction of wastewater heat recovery systems to provide heating to buildings in two areas of Scotland. ■■

Richard explained Northumbrian Water’s environmental pollution challenge – they were one of the lowest ranked water and wastewater service providers with regards to environmental pollution. Echoing an earlier presentation, he explained how people were the key to success, and that their Leading Improvement through Employees (LITE) workshops, involving frontline employees, leaders and regulators, provided ideas which led to lots of marginal gains rather than one “silver bullet” solution.

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Finally, Ann chaired a thoughtprovoking session on shocks and stresses in the water industry. We were asked to map out a variety of situations, from the everyday to the extreme, in terms of their likelihood and impact on the UK water sector. The group covered a wide cross section of the industry, so it was interesting to see the range of views that arose. For me this underlined the continued need to collaborate with others in what we do, as what is our priority may not be theirs or indeed our customers.

For me, the biggest revelation from this plastics discussion was that the UK plastics industry is unregulated – there are currently no controls on the type of plastics put on the market (which goes some way in explaining the constant confusion on what is recyclable and what is not), and no producers of plastic pay for recapture, sorting and recycling of waste plastic. If the water industry is held accountable for the pollution we can cause to the environment, why is that not the case for the plastics industry? The next part of the afternoon brought 3 breakout sessions chaired by Donald MacBrayne (Scottish Water), Richard Warneford (Northumbrian Water) and Ann Cousins (ARUP). ■■

Donald took us through the journey Scottish Water Horizons, a wholly owned subsidiary of Scottish Water, has taken in producing energy from waste and proving that innovation as a disruptor really works. This includes Scotland first anaerobic digester, 3 biomass projects on Scottish Water assets and more recently the

The final presentation of the day came from Vittoria Danino, Head of Anglian Centre for Water Studies, on social approaches to reducing water consumption. Vittoria explained that what people say they will do and what they actually do are different things and telling people to do something, even if they know it is the right thing, rarely works. Therefore, many information campaigns fail to impact behaviours. However, if we can disrupt, or even nudge, societal norms so that something like saving water is not only seen to be the right thing to do, but something that most others do too, we can have a much bigger impact. Again, a key point for me was that collaboration is key – we need to understand what our customers think when they see our messaging before we can start to change their views. The afternoon was brought to a close by Sara Venning, thanking both attendees and sponsors alike and summing up the day’s events. I was struck by Sara’s closing remarks that even after years of campaigning by the water industry, we are still not the downfall of single use wipes – the debate around plastics is. Is this another example of the unintended consequences of disruption, or simply the result of “calling an emergency”?

2019 ANNUAL CONFERENCE | REVIEW

THE CONFERENCE – DAY TWO A review by Joshua Graver, Water Regulations Inspector at Anglian Water Well…our final day certainly didn’t disappoint! After a brilliant social event hosted by Z-Tech the evening before a number of us were slightly on the fragile side. The morning was kicked off with an introduction by Tim Bergin who highlighted challenges facing our industry, a key one being the ability of retaining talent. As all industries are ever changing at an extremely fast rate, you’ve furthermore got an evergrowing gig economy to compete with. This was followed by an engaging talk from Oliver Rees, he explained in detail about three mindset changes that the industry must alter, which are ‘close to open, control to empowering and exclusive to inclusive’. This led to some comparisons of how different companies approach challenges, such as Telsa’s open approach to reward anyone who successfully hacks their cars with a $35,000 reward, plus a free car. These examples are a great insight to companies that have achieved those required mindset changes. Ciaran & Mark’s key messages focused on how data & AI could be the next ‘Disruption’ in the form of robotic process automation (bots), along with how most companies struggle to take innovation from paper to practice. I feel this will be key for the future, as our customers seek a swift response while ensuring it’s personal, it’s the personal

aspect I feel is key, as Ciaran highlighted ‘by Starbucks using your name their revenue rose by 25%’. We got to hear from Thomas & Ross about their time attending 1st Latin America & Caribbean YWP conference, which sounded brilliant! They explained the staggering impact western culture is causing in Chile due to the demand of avocados (1 avocado=300 litres of water), leading to water scarcity. This made me realise how every decision we make has an impact, even 7000+ miles away! Plus, I’m pleased more Iwater members got to share an amazing experience similar to myself. The Young Person Network was officially launched by Kirsten & Sarah, which sounds great for young people like myself emerging into this industry, plus I got to experience ‘network speed dating’ in their afternoon session. As someone in their early career it was brilliant to hear the focus & investment

Seven Trent are putting on ensuring their workforce remain ‘healthy, resilient & productive’ to succeed, they’ve started to achieve this by creating a ‘challenge cup’. Employees can pitch innovations for the business which relates back to the mindset changes Oliver mentioned, from this it successfully led the company to create a drone team which has made £200,000 of savings! They’re also creating a new tech academy as part of PR19, costing £10 million. Lastly, we finished with a panel discussion focusing around talent acquisition and retention which Nick Ellins summarised perfectly with, ‘if you practice inclusiveness, you’ll get diversity’. The brilliant conference was closed by Sara, highlighting all the aspects myself and fellow members were lucky enough to enjoy over those three days which involved over 600 people, raised 1000’s for Wateraid, to make it the ‘hottest ticket in Belfast’.

STREAM 2019 The Institute of Water continued its partnership with the STREAM Industrial Doctorate Centre and hosted a selection of students who showcased their water industry-focussed projects, via poster presentations, to conference delegates. Delegates were challenged to engage with the students, pose challenging questions and vote for their favourite innovative research project.

The student that achieved the most votes from delegates was Amanda Larasati from Imperial College London for her EngD project with the very long title: In-situ/On-site Regeneration of Activated Carbon for Water Treatment: Batch Tests. This project looked at researching feasible, yet practical on-site regenerant solutions for water treatment. Great work Amanda!

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