Put A Spring In Your Step Up

Lila Thompson urges the sector to work with Spring and use its services to pursue collaborative innovation, as it begins to deliver the ramped up ambition of AMP8.

start of AMP8 this month is exhilarating and daunting in equal measure. In years gone by, the sector could only have dreamed of such a bumper budget. At £104bn over 2025-30, this offers the
potential to deliver meaningful outcomes for customers and the environment, and in the process to begin to shift the dial on performance and trust.

But make no mistake, getting there is going to be tough. This is not a generous package with lots
of slack in it; it’s a very tight package that is action-packed. The programme is 71% bigger than at
PR19, bringing a myriad of practical challenges – from needing to manage work scheduling with military precision, to simply finding enough staff and resources to turn ambition into reality. The public and politicians are expecting a lot of bang for their buck, and will not tolerate failure.

Delivery Plans required Reflecting this, Ofwat has, for the first time, required water companies to publish Delivery Plans that it will regularly check their actual progress against. The aim is to increase transparency and accountability relating to the enhancement programme specifically, and to enable any delivery issues to be spotted early.

Each company must set out how it will meet the Price Control Deliverables and interim milestones set for its enhancement programme, and then report on progress on a six monthly basis, in October/November and April/May of each year. Companies must also submit an independently assured report of their progress against their delivery plan in each July, alongside their annual performance reporting.

Ofwat is expecting draft plans by 12 May, and final plans by 15 July. The sector has already put in a lot of effort to prepare for this sharp step up. The supply chain has geared up and is now waiting for companies to start releasing work so it can hit the ground running on delivery. Many water companies have their framework partnerships in place, and have provided better visibility of what is coming down the line than in previous AMPs. Further details with timeframes are now awaited.

But the simple truth is, the sector will not be able to deliver such an ambitious programme if it continues with business-as-usual – even if that business-as-usual is expertly executed. We urgently need new approaches, new tools, techniques and technologies. And what’s more, we need to work on these together. There is a place for each company or contractor to develop its own new ideas as befits its needs and interests. But AMP8 will also specifically require collaborative innovation.

Spring has sprung

Spring – the UK water innovation centre of excellence – stands ready to help. It seeks to raise the profile of innovation needs and opportunities; and to enable effective delivery of innovation and collaboration by creating centralised intelligence and increasing knowledge sharing.

Spring did the hard yards in AMP7, getting set up and scaled up, and experimenting with offerings. We now have mature core services ready to go – all of which have already demonstrated value and could make significant contributions to AMP8 challenges.

These include:

Spring Accelerator – Spring has identified, in collaboration with water companies, specific challenges for innovators to solve and is currently mobilising 15 trials where outcomes will be shared across the sector.
Strategic coordination – for AMP 8, Spring is re-positioning its offering towards coordination: helping to support the resolution of, and reduce duplication in solving, large-scale sector challenges.
Knowledge sharing – This takes various forms and follows six best practice principles. A great example is the Showcases Spring hosts, in which water companies and their partners offer deep dive insights into projects they have run. Northumbrian Water’s Dr Angela MacOscar shares her experience of a recent showcase in the box.
Brokerage – Spring links water companies up with their peers and others inside and outside the sector to collaborate on innovation trials, bids and other initiatives. I urge all water companies, suppliers and innovators to make the most of Spring’s facilities, as part of your effort to rise to the challenge of AMP8.
SPRING SHOWCASE: A BLUEPRINT FOR COLLABORATIVE PROGRESS

At Northumbrian Water, innovation is deeply embedded in how we think about infrastructure and deliver for our customers and the environment. When we attended the recent Spring Showcase, it didn’t shift our direction, it strengthened it.

The Showcase highlighted the Water Industry Printfrastructure (WIP) project, a collaboration between United Utilities, ChangeMaker3D, Manchester Metropolitan University (PrintCity) and Scottish Water, supported by the Ofwat Innovation Fund. The project demonstrates a step change in how the sector can design and deliver assets using 3D printing technology to manufacture components in concrete and plastic, both on and off site.

For Northumbrian Water, the opportunity to validate and expand on this thinking was invaluable.

As an organisation already exploring advanced manufacturing techniques, we saw real alignment with our strategic direction. The Showcase gave us the confidence that the sector is ready to adopt this at scale and reinforced our ambition to be at the forefront of practical delivery.

We’re now progressing plans for the UK’s first underground water asset created using 3D printing in situ, a Combined Sewer Overflow chamber, designed in collaboration with ChangeMaker3D. What began as shared insight is now driving sector-first implementation.

The early results from Printfrastructure are compelling: 25% lower carbon, 20% cost savings, and 55% less labour. By building on the knowledge shared by our peers and applying it through a mature innovation lens, Northumbrian Water is continuing to turn bold ideas into operational reality.

Commenting, Carly Perry, managing director of Spring Innovation, said: “It’s exciting to see the innovation ecosystem collaborating to accelerate adoption: Ofwat funding projects, Spring and United Utilities sharing knowledge in a meaningful way, and Northumbrian Water driving change based on the lessons learned.”

By Dr Angela MacOscar, head of innovation at Northumbrian Water.