Are We Thinking in Systems?
The UK’s water management landscape — encompassing leakage control, metering, drought planning, and reservoir development — too often operates in silos. While individual elements (e.g., leakage targets, drought permits, water resource management plans) are well-regulated and meticulously planned, we are still a long way from true systems thinking.
We tend to:
- Treat reservoirs as standalone infrastructure projects rather than dynamic components in a broader, adaptive supply-demand network.
- Consider drought management reactively rather than as a pre-emptive, integrated resilience strategy.
- Over-rely on leakage reduction and metering as efficiency tools without linking them holistically to long-term supply security and demand-side reform.
Is Climate Change Breaking the System?
Climate change isn’t just stressing the system — it’s exposing its limitations:
- More frequent and intense droughts will strain both existing reservoirs and the assumptions underpinning Drought Plans.
- Seasonal variability and flash rainfall challenge the old hydrological models reservoirs were built on, affecting refill rates and ecological flow releases.
- Customer behaviour and demand patterns are changing, but metering rollout and insights are not keeping pace.
- Leakage management, though improved, remains short-termist in places — focused on annual targets rather than lifetime asset value or resilience under stress.
In short: yes, climate change is breaking the system — or at least exposing the fact that what we have isn’t yet a system in the truest sense.
So, What Do We Do?
Here’s what a system-aware response might involve:
A. Reservoirs: Think Network, Not Node
- Move from isolated project-based thinking to strategic interconnectivity (linked reservoirs, inter-regional transfers).
- Design for multi-functionality: flood storage, environmental flows, drought buffer, energy generation (e.g., pumped hydro), and even recreation.
B. Leakage & Metering: Join the Dots
- Treat leakage and metering as demand management enablers, not just compliance checkboxes.
- Use smart metering data to anticipate pressure zones, drought-sensitive areas, and to link behaviour change with weather risk.
- Incentivise leakage reduction that delivers resilience outcomes, not just volume targets.
C. Drought: Shift from Emergency to Anticipation
- Build climate scenario planning into WRMPs and Drought Plans — not just 1-in-200 events but cascading, compounding risks.
- Create flexible abstraction regimes that can adapt dynamically to stress signals (not just rigid permit systems).
- Enable communities to become partners in resilience via metering, communications, incentives, and local water reuse.
D. Regulation & Governance: Align for Systems Thinking
- Encourage Ofwat, Environment Agency, and Defra to co-create a systems resilience framework — one that balances affordability, resilience, environment, and innovation.
- Reform planning frameworks to treat reservoir building, water reuse, demand-side interventions, and smart infrastructure as equal components of resilience planning.
Water doesn’t work in silos — and neither should we.
So Where Does the Supply Chain Come In?
The supply chain has a critical, yet often underutilised role in building a smarter, more integrated water system. Here’s how:
Innovation at Scale: From smart metering tech to AI-powered leak detection, suppliers often lead on capability. But the challenge is uptake. We need faster pathways from proven innovation to embedded solutions.
Whole-Life Thinking: Contractors and suppliers are increasingly able to deliver solutions that consider not just asset performance, but environmental, carbon and social outcomes. Procurement must evolve to reward that long-term value.
Data-Driven Resilience: The supply chain is sitting on vast pools of operational and geospatial data. If we unlock and align that insight across leakage, metering and asset performance, we can turn fragmented data into actionable intelligence.
Flexible Infrastructure Delivery: Building new reservoirs mustn’t take decades. The supply chain can help drive modular design, local engagement, and phased delivery to reduce both risk and delay.
System Integration: Many in the supply chain work across sectors — energy, telecoms, transport. That cross-sector insight is vital to help the water sector learn how to think like a system, not a silo.
If we bring in the supply chain not just as a contractor, but as a co-designer of the future system — we unlock innovation, speed, and shared accountability.
Final Thoughts
The UK needs to stop treating water as a segmented utility function and start managing it as a living system — interdependent, vulnerable, and vital to everything from food to housing to energy. Climate change is the stress test we cannot afford to fail. It’s time for system thinking not just in policy papers but in investment, planning, and public expectations.