Michelle is a chartered civil engineer and experienced management professional, with over 30 years in the water industry. Michelle has worked extensively across the water sector in England and Wales and, most recently, with stakeholders in Scotland to promote Ethical Business Practice & Regulation (Hodges & Steinholtz) supporting the sector to operate collaboratively moving forward.
Michelle is the Chair of the Water Sector Multi-capitals Network (WSMcN) Steering Group and is passionate in her belief that we cannot keep doing things the way we have done in the past. The WSMcN is a vital platform to enable us as a sector to be accountable and to adopt a consistent approach that will ensure we can adapt and evolve to address the uncertainty that we face. Michelle believes that the decisions we make today will deliver the necessary change to address the climate crisis. The way we deliver water and wastewater services is not necessarily fit for the future and we need to address this now, to ensure intergenerational equity. As professionals, we have a vital role to play in ensuring the sector can deliver services for the future, and we need to be accountable to society for the role we play.

Adrian Rees has over 30 years’ experience in economic regulatory and asset management planning. He has well-established credibility in the water sector, as an integrator of knowledge across a wide range of policy and technical areas. His experience includes consultancy advice and expenditure planning services (e.g. business plan development, portfolio optimisation, price review support) to a range of clients. In addition to consulting, he previously held positions at Yorkshire Water, Ofwat and Thames Water. During his career, Adrian has identified innovations, developed processes and implemented changes which are now part of the water sector’s landscape and being adopted by other sectors, such as using customers' valuations of services, the UKWIR 'Common Framework' 2014 update and applying 6 Capitals in decision frameworks. He is comfortable moving between the wider strategic picture and the underlying technical detail.

Anita Payne is the Executive Director of the Water Industry Forum (WIF), an independent subsidiary of British Water. WIF provides secretariat support to the network and Anita’s role on the steering group is to advise on how WIF can help the network meet its objectives. Anita has worked in the water sector for most of her career with roles in economic regulators, government department and agencies in Australia and the UK.

Doug is head of information management in energy, water and environment division at Sweco UK & Ireland. Doug Marsh is a former marine engineer with mechanical and electrical specialisms developed whilst serving in the UK Royal Navy. He is registered as an Asset Management Professional and as a Chartered Environmentalist. Doug specializes in asset, information, and risk management, and has a proven track record of guiding and supporting major asset-owning organisations on their sustainability and business transformation journeys. With experience across a wide range of industry sectors, Doug offers expertise in making better whole-life asset decisions to achieve a balance of multi-capital outcomes.