NewsNews – News & UpdatesWater Breakthrough Challenge
September 9, 2024
The Water Breakthrough Challenge 5 (‘Breakthrough 5’) is now open for entries, with Ofwat calling on water companies in England and Wales to propose bold and innovative projects to tackle some of the water sector’s biggest challenges. Read on for more information, or head to the Breakthrough 5 page to get involved.
Read more about Breakthrough 5
To date, Ofwat’s £200 million Innovation Fund has awarded more than £150 million to 93 projects across England and Wales that are pioneering solutions to improve the water sector’s environmental impact – from converting treated sewage sludge into gas, biochar and ash ‘stones’ to installing SuDs to help with flooding issues in London.
Since 2020, the Water Breakthrough Challenges have seen water companies form new cross-sector collaborations with utility providers, universities, charities, SMEs, tech giants, local and foreign governments and community organisations.
Previous winners have included robots that patrol water and wastewater pipes to pinpoint cracks, carbon capture technology to convert CO2 into household products, seagrass meadow restoration off the Welsh coast, and projects to power city buses with gas extracted from sewage.
Ofwat will award up to £40 million to even more innovative and forward-thinking water company-led initiatives in Water Breakthrough Challenge 5. It encourages entrants to put forward ideas never seen before; that encourage the testing and the rollout of new innovations for the sector, with a big focus on sharing knowledge widely.
Since 2020, the Innovation Fund has awarded funding to 93 innovative projects that can transform services for customers, communities and the environment. From sewage sludge to leaks, smart water neighbourhoods to supporting vulnerable customers, these partnership-delivered projects are helping to solve the big challenges we face.
Collaboration is at the core of the innovation fund – among water companies and with organisations outside of our sector. They foster new thinking, new approaches to problems, and result in solutions that may otherwise not have come about.
In this fifth Water Breakthrough Challenge, we’re awarding up to £40 million to highly collaborative projects that will make even greater progress in solving our sector’s challenges and create a positive legacy for customers and our environment
Whether you have entered before or you’re submitting an entry for the first time, in this blog we share everything you need to know about entering Breakthrough 5, from competition details to support available to entrants.
Join our launch webinar on tomorrow, Tuesday 10 September at 11.30 am to run through the competition process with the Fund delivery team, and ask all your competition-related questions live!
Partnerships must be led by water companies in England or Wales, including New Appointments and Variations (NAVs). Entry partners must provide the remaining 10% of the entry’s total financial costs as a mandatory 10% financial contribution.
Entries should focus their impact to one or more of the Fund’s innovation themes.
Catalyst stream
Transform stream
The Catalyst stream welcomes entries that test new ways of working that go beyond business-as-usual innovation practices in the water sector, with a particular focus on increasing and improving collaboration and building partnerships from within and outside the water sector.
Individual entries to the Catalyst stream can request between £150,000 and £2 million in funding.
Water companies can devolve management of their entries to the Catalyst stream to their partners. This includes drafting and submission of the entry itself.
The timeline for the Catalyst stream can be seen in the graphic below.
The Transform stream aims to spark ambitious innovation and enable new approaches and ways of working, equipping the water sector to address the big challenges facing the sector, driving far-reaching and long-lasting benefits to customers, society and the environment across England and Wales now and into the future.
Individual entries to the Transform steam can request funding between £2 million and £10 million[1] .
The Transform stream has a 2-stage process, illustrated in the figure below.
Following feedback from water companies, we have made changes to the timelines to this year’s Transform Stream, as set out below:
As a further difference to the Catalyst stream, in the Transform stream entries should be of high strategic importance to water companies, and as such need to be coordinated and submitted by water companies themselves.
[1] Subject to certain conditions, Ofwat is open to accepting entries bidding for greater than £10 million. Please see Entry Requirements section of the Transform Entrant Handbook for more details.
Similarly to the previous rounds, both streams of the competition maintain a requirement for 10% financial contribution by the entry partners.
As in previous competitions, Breakthrough 5 reduces barriers to entry by allowing owners of background IPR to charge a licence fee at a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory rate. Intellectual property developed throught eh competition (foreground IPR) will still need to be licenced to water companies in England and Wales, royalty-free.
Entrants to Breakthrough 5 can take advantage of a variety of support channels. These are designed to help with different aspects of the competition, from understanding the assessment process to writing a top-quality entry.
First stop: the Entrant Handbook. This represents your point of reference for anything regarding the competition rules, including eligibility, assessment criteria, entry questions and more. Depending on which stream you are entering, we strongly recommend you download a copy of the Catalyst stream Entrant Handbook, or the Transform stream Entrant Handbook.
Browse the up-to-date list of the most frequently asked questions (FAQs) and quickly find an answer to your Breakthrough 5-related query.
We continue to run our popular one-to-one surgery sessions during the entry period, giving entrants an opportunity to ask questions about the entry process. They aim to help clarify publicly available information and support entrants in understanding the guidance currently available.
Sign up for a 15-minute session with the delivery team, based on the competition stream you are expecting to enter:
Please note the delivery team will not be able to provide any guidance on entries themselves through the surgery sessions.
If you can’t find an answer through any of the above channels, you can always drop us a line at [email protected]. We strive to answer your queries within 2 working days during the entry period.
On Tuesday 10 September at 11.30am, we will host a Launch Webinar and Live Q&A – a chance to run through the entry process, differences to the previous rounds, and ask anything you’d like to know about the competition.
The webinar recording and transcript will be made available after the event.
