Anglian Water Seeks To Build And Deepen Relations With Its Supply Chain As It Prepares For AMP8

Anglian Water seeks to build and deepen relations with its supply chain as it prepares for AMP8

Mark Coates, Vice President, Infrastructure Policy Advancement, Bentley Systems

After Anglian Water’s liaison meeting with British Water, Mark Coates, vice president of Infrastructure Policy Advancement at Bentley Systems and chair of British Water’s International Forum, spoke to Anglian Water’s Major Infrastructure Procurement Manager Alison Bevan, MCIPS, and Head of Delivery Portfolio Management Euan Black. They spoke about their upcoming programme of work and building relationships with their supply chain as they prepare to deliver a vast capital programme as part of their AMP8 (2025 – 2030) plans.

Anglian Water is, by geographic area, the largest water and sewerage company in England and Wales, covering 20% of the land area (27,476 square kilometres) and serving approximately seven million customers. This figure is set to grow, as the region’s population is predicted to increase by more than 700,000 people by 2043, placing extra pressure on water resources and the wider environment, with new housing developments and connection to water supplies crucial to enabling sustainable growth.

Meanwhile, three-quarters of the land use in the East of England is used for agriculture, more than any other region. Agriculture’s economic contribution is especially sizeable, at roughly twice the national average. Lincolnshire supports 75,000 food sector jobs, processing around 70% of the U.K.’s fish and around 30% of England’s vegetables. This statistic demonstrates the extent to which economic activity in the region depends on water resources.

Coupled with these challenges, the Anglian Water region also has the lowest rainfall, at 2.14 millimetres per day, compared to a national average of 2.85 millimetres per day. The region also has the highest average temperatures in England (11.4 degrees Celsius versus 11 degrees Celsius).

Anglian Water operates 143 water treatment works, supplying more than one billion litres of water every day to 2.5 million households and 110,000 businesses. Between 2025 and 2030 (AMP8), the water company plans to deliver a record GBP 9 billion of investment, designed to deliver environmental enhancements and mitigate the impacts of climate change—particularly across climate vulnerable assets, as well as unlock social and economic growth in the region. They plan to achieve all these goals while keeping bill rises to a minimum.

Euan Black, head of Delivery Portfolio Management at Anglian Water, says the water company is delivering efficiently and to plan across the current AMP cycle and remains on track to close out AMP7 in a strong position.

Anglian Water will spend its largest amount on capital investment in 2024-2025—year five of AMP7—as it aims to work even more efficiently with the supply chain and end the current five-year cycle in a good position to start AMP8, where the scale of planned investment is double that of the current AMP.

Black says that it’s important for Anglian Water and its supply chain to plan for the long-term and view investment as 10- or 15-year programmes of investment rather than in five-year chunks around AMP cycles. Examples include the two new reservoirs planned, one in Lincolnshire and another in the Fens, in partnership with Cambridge Water—with the planning underway now but the benefits not being realised until 2036.

TACKLING THE CLIMATE CRISIS WITH ITS SUPPLY CHAIN

Building and strengthening relationships with the supply chain to help tackle key challenges has been an important focus for Anglian Water, particularly over the past two decades,
and will remain so in the future.

For example, Anglian Water’s engagement with its supply chain on climate change began back in 2007 when they invited key partners to HRH The Prince of Wales’ first Mayday Summit.

More recently, in February 2023, Anglian Water bought its value chain together to discuss climate change resilience, climate change adaptation, and the work towards net-zero carbon. This Climate for Change event welcomed over 100 attendees and featured Chris Stark, who was then chief executive of the Committee for Climate Change, and the day kicked off with a call to arms. Stark has since been appointed head of Mission Control for Clean Power by the new Labour government and oversees decarbonising the U.K.’s electricity by 2030.

Anglian Water sees collaboration as an enabler to the complexities of adapting to climate change. With committed leadership, and in partnership with a determined supply chain, the utility has reduced capital carbon, the carbon embodied in its assets, by more than 64.2% by 2023-2024 from its original 2010 baseline, continuing to work to achieve net-zero operational carbon emissions by 2030.

GEARING UP FOR AMP8

This collaboration with the supply chain is set to become even more important during AMP8, as Anglian Water prepares to double its investment programme. For example, in March 2024, Anglian Water announced Binnies would be rejoining the @one Alliance ahead of AMP8 to help deliver water-specific engineering expertise, along with nature-based solutions capabilities, in collaboration with the Alliance’s other seven partners.

During AMP8, Anglian Water will deliver a range of new projects, including:

• Using nature-based solutions to create treatment wetlands the size of 100 football pitches
• Delivering 52 new Sustainable Drainage schemes (SuDs)
• Increasing capacity of the waste water network by 112 Olympicsized swimming pools
• Further reducing the risk of pollutions and spills
• Renewing 695 kilometres of vulnerable pipes to futureproof water mains and sewers against climate impacts.

The water company says it needs its supply chain to help it succeed across all activity but particularly with projects or solutions that it has never delivered before, which are becoming apparent as the industry faces into the unknown challenges of climate change. Black says that Anglian Water is expecting to see a huge increase in key suppliers during AMP8, so the supply chain is going to need to be reactive and nimble enough to grow. Repeatability and consistency will also be extremely important too, as Anglian Water expects to create and deliver solutions that will work across several sites, with solutions and learnings being repeated on similar projects. Anglian Water strongly believes it is important to engage proactively and early with suppliers to solve the breadth challenges which will be seen during AMP8.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD SUPPLY CHAIN PARTNER?

Alison Bevan is Anglian Water’s lead on procurement for major infrastructure and also leads their sustainable procurement strategy. She says that Anglian Water will look at how it can develop its world-leading alliances during AMP8 to take it even further into AMP9. The principles of its alliances are good faith, value for money, open book, rewarding for outperformance, integration, collaboration, and relational contracting. While the capacity and financial capabilities of the supply chain are extremely important, the health, safety, and the wellbeing culture of an organisation are also key to Anglian Water. Furthermore, the values and sustainability of suppliers are crucial for Anglian Water as it aims to deliver against their purpose—to bring environmental and social prosperity to the region it serves, through its commitment to love every drop.

Bevan says, “As a purpose-driven organisation, Anglian Water has the ability to make a significant impact through how it engages with organisations, so there’s no point contracting with organisations which don’t share our purpose-driven values. Working together with the supply chain, Anglian Water can identify opportunities to deliver activities which increase social value, improve the local environment and local communities. Ultimately, Anglian Water wants to build partnerships with suppliers looking to pull in the same direction.”

The water company will also build sustainable practices into its contract terms and conditions with suppliers, as well as look how it can share best practice on sustainable practices with
its supply chain.

Over the coming year, Anglian Water expects to issue 18 significant procurement frameworks including data, digital and tech frameworks which are out now as well as cyber security, energy consultancy, programme delivery partner, and civils and minor buildings.

Anglian Water highlighted four key reasons why supply chain partners want to work with them in AMP8. These include the volume of work, the predictability of work, the opportunity to innovate and bring ideas to the table, and the opportunity to make a real difference to the local environment and communities.

One of the big growth areas in AMP8 is going to be nature-based solutions. Of all the nature-based solutions proposed between 2025 and 2030 across the whole industry, more than two-thirds will be in the East of England—and Anglian Water is now looking to engage with the supply chain on this ahead of an expected procurement exercise in the latter half of this year.

Supply chain health and robustness is going to be particularly important for water companies looking to deliver record investment in AMP8. It is encouraging to see Anglian Water’s awareness of the opportunities and challenges of building and deploying a robust supply chain as we close out AMP7 and start AMP8.