Northumbrian Water Group (NWG) are an asset owner and water services provider across the North East (Northumbrian Water Ltd) and South East (Essex and Suffolk Water) regions, supplying water and sewerage services to 4.5 million people.
As a publically funded body, they have been challenged to ‘deliver more for less’. Water companies operate in 5 year Asset Management Plan (AMP) cycles in which they secure funding from OFWAT (regulatory body) to deliver a number of outputs to satisfy commitments which they make to their customers. Within the current AMP6 period, NWG have been challenged to realise 22% of efficiencies while delivering an equivalent number of outputs to previous AMP periods.
AMP6 focuses on delivering £800m of capital investment, with improved customer outcomes at the lowest whole life total expenditure (Totex). Additional considerations include:
- OFWAT Service incentive mechanism (SIM) – continual assessment, ranking, reward and penalty against changes customer satisfaction.
- Competitive retail services – all water companies will soon be able to compete for the supply of services nationally to retail customers
- Population growth
- Ageing asset base.
Their challenge is to deliver this step-change in performance and achieve the customer outcomes, financial efficiencies and the organisational vision to be “The national leader in the provision of sustainable water and waste water services”.
AMP6 presented a huge opportunity for NWG to transform its approach to the development, delivery and operation of its assets and in doing so enable a step change in business performance, supply chain engagement, efficiency and customer service.
