The water company plans to collaborate more closely with contractors in a move it says will “completely transform” the way it delivers capital investment.
It is to form an alliance by April 2013 of four design and build partnerships, a programme manager and a “technology innovator”. The alliance will shape the company’s asset management plan for 2015-2020 (AMP6), which is worth in the region of £2 billion to £3 billion, subject to approval by regulator Ofwat.
“We have pretty much turned things upside down,” capital delivery director Lawrence Gosden told Utility Week. “We are moving towards a huge alliance model – a single alliance which will help us to deal with some pretty huge challenges.”
The move is driven by pressure to keep bills low while dealing with deteriorating assets. Gosden said: “Those two elements don’t really combine, so we need to do something very very different. Pulling a team together from the best part of the market gives us the best chance to deal with those issues.”
Involving a technology innovator company is “particularly exciting”, said Gosden. “That hugely growing industry of turning data into information is the kind of skillset we want to bring into the programme.”
It won’t all be about building assets, Gosden added, and the company is looking for “more ways of providing a service without pouring concrete”.