Amount awarded: £250,000
Led by: Northumbrian Water
Partners: Affinity Water Limited, Albion Water Ltd, Anglian Water Services Ltd, Bristol Water plc, Hafren Dyfrdwy, Irish Water, Northern Ireland Water, Portsmouth Water Ltd, Scottish Water, SES Water, Severn Trent Water plc, South East Water Ltd, South Staffordshire Water, South West Water Ltd, Southern Water Services Ltd, Thames Water Ltd, UK Water Industry Research Limited, United Utilities Water Ltd, Wessex Water, and Yorkshire Water Services Ltd.
Project completed: January 2022
Visit the Spring website for more information.
Spring is the UK and Ireland’s centre of excellence for water sector innovation, where the industry unites to tackle the sector’s biggest challenges, from climate change to river health.
Launched in 2021 and funded by the first Innovation in Water Challenge in response to Ofwat’s call for a more collaborative, forward-looking sector, Spring continues to help the water industry fast-track innovation today, benefiting customers, communities, and the environment.
How? By building ways to centralise industry intelligence, make innovation needs, opportunities, and priorities clear, and ensure that knowledge flows freely. An environment that looks beyond its own walls to find bold, groundbreaking solutions to the industry’s most urgent problems.
Whilst Spring was originally conceived as a project as part of the first competition, since that original project it has continued and today it’s funded by water company investment and supply chain revenue.
As a central intelligence hub, Spring is helping to galvanise the industry around the Water Innovation Strategy seven themes by showcasing what’s already been trialled, connecting the right people early on, and sharing knowledge to help others adopt new ideas more easily and quickly.
There are several water companies across the UK and Ireland, each facing the same challenges but often having to tackle them in isolation and therefore employing different approaches. For example, when Spring was first established, similar innovation projects were undertaken an average of four times in the sector, resulting in duplicated costs and time.
Since 2021, this situation has been changing, with Spring adopting the role of broker between water company colleagues, leading academics, and sector suppliers. Spring has created a single place that brings together all the innovation, insights, and lessons from hundreds of projects. A place where key supplier contacts, data, trial results, costs, and benefits are all at people’s fingertips, ready to drive smarter solutions and faster progress.
As a result, the brilliant innovations emerging within water companies are brought into the spotlight, and knowledge is openly shared to help others adopt them faster and more efficiently. That means, fewer silos, less starting from scratch each time, and a reduction in wasted effort.
Achievements to date
As the water industry’s eyes and ears, Spring is at the epicentre, tracking emerging ideas, uncovering hidden insights, and connecting the dots between today’s challenges and tomorrow’s solutions, some of which are funded by the Ofwat Innovation Fund.
Example deliverables:
Example company outcomes
Spring is maturing into a core support function for the sector’s innovation ambitions, where water companies come to them to help shortcut the learning curve, avoid duplication, and move faster using a springboard of shared experience.
Spring’s work will continue into the next AMP, stewarding the sector’s innovation future and helping to deliver much-needed change for customers.
—
For more information on Spring, take a look at the following resources:
