Understanding Digital Transformation in the Water Industry

As a young professional (and relatively new to the water industry), it was a fantastic opportunity to hear from strong leaders within my industry – such as keynote speaker Peter Simpson (CEO, Anglian Water UK) who spoke about the importance of treating data with as much care as our physical assets. He highlighted the importance of removing silos both for data and for people and “building back smarter” instead of bigger. On the first day of the conference, inspirational speakers like Peter helped paint a picture of the potential future of the water industry – and the opportunities for those of us who are just getting started.

Across all the panels, roundtables and industry professional speeches, a few themes linked all the experiences together. Joao Feliciano (CEO, AGS) spoke about aligning people and strategy by giving an example of how AGS responded to a change in the regulator’s requirements to implement asset management plans – while many others saw this as a threat to their way of working, Joao saw the challenge as an opportunity to drive positive change.

Similarly, Reid Campbell (Director of Water Services, Halifax Water) talked about using problems to evaluate the estate in its entirety - and avoid getting tunnel vision. For Halifax Water, this became apparent with the realisation that the positive impact of deploying improved meter reading sensors would be limited while the data those sensors were gathering wasn’t being handled and used to its full potential. Both of these are great examples of not getting lost in the details, and not being afraid to expand the scope of innovations.

Another common theme was building a culture that enabled and encouraged operational teams to input into strategy and to help steer us towards our goals. Torri Martin (Deputy CIO, City of Atlanta) spoke about demystifying technology by asking employees of the water utility for the innovations they would like to see – letting the workers who know the issues, identify the need for change and provide the solutions by building innovation into internal business processes. Jennifer Rebeiro (CIO, City West Water) also spoke about how by transitioning the business mindset from asset focused to customer-focused and providing data and analytics across all levels of the business, City West Water aligned their day-to-day operations to the needs of the business and the needs of their customers. 

One of the strongest themes throughout the day was breaking down silos, both for data and for people. Martine Watson (Head of OT Programs, Sydney Water) highlighted this for OT, which across the water industry has a history of being kept isolated from IT and the wider business. This has limited the usability of OT data, but with the rapid acceleration of technology in both the IT and OT space, it’s become increasingly easier to bring that data from physical assets forward to the people who can use it to make decisions. This important point was also covered by Keith Hayes (VP, Bluefield Research) who shared his experience with how the increase in awareness of the possibilities of data spurred a rethink of system architecture – to break down barriers not just in data, but also between data and the people who can use it.

In only one day of the 3-day virtual event, I learnt so much about the mindset and possibilities of the water industry on an international scale. Having a better understanding of the challenges the industry faces and the potential for positive change inspires me to drive for the best future we can build.