Judging panel for the Water Breakthrough Challenge: your nominations welcome

March 3, 2021

The first round of the upcoming £40 million Water Breakthrough Challenge launches in May 2021. We are inviting a range of entries through our ‘open by design’ approach. We see this as a real opportunity for the water sector to showcase the breadth and ambition of innovation that the challenges can enable and shape the Fund’s future.

Over the coming months, we will be forming an expert panel for the Water Breakthrough Challenge. This expert panel will judge the entries and make recommendations to Ofwat for which entries should be successful and receive funding.

We will form a diverse panel who bring a wide range of perspectives, with a good balance of water sector and non-water sector voices and our Innovation Fund Partner, Nesta and Arup, are considering suitable candidates.

We seek expertise and experience in two or more of the following areas:

Experience in leadership, operations and/or innovation in the water sector in England and Wales
Experience in leadership, operations and/or innovation in the international water sector and/or transferable sectors (e.g. energy sector, transport, construction, retail banking)
Experience in transformational innovation programmes or change in the international water sector and/or transferable sectors (e.g. energy sector, transport, construction, retail banking)
Consumer representation
Expertise in one or more of our 5 strategic innovation themes:
Responding and adapting to climate change, including how to meet the sector’s ambition of net-zero emissions.
Restoring and improving the ecological status of our water environments, protecting current and future customers from the impacts of extreme weather and pollution.
Understanding long-term operational resilience and infrastructure risks to customers and the environment, finding solutions to mitigate these in sustainable and efficient ways.
Testing new ways of conducting core activities to deliver wider public value.
Exploring the opportunities associated with open data, stimulating innovation and collaboration, for example, encouraging new business models and service offerings that benefit customers, including those in vulnerable circumstances.

The nomination period has now closed. Thank you to everyone who submitted a nomination. Make sure you are signed up to our Newsletter and be the first to know who the judges will be!