The Berkeley Partnership

Where were they?

Although already recognised as the most efficient operator by Ofwat, Wessex continuously strives to remain at the forefront of efficiency and sustainable development on behalf of their customers. With the next major industry assessment less than three years away, they wanted to start moving their capability in ‘work and asset management’ to a new level. This would mean: driving even better asset performance and longevity; and servicing and operating their plants and networks even more efficiently whilst improving customer experience.Wessex wanted to understand the best way of building this capability. The scale of transformation necessary was potentially bigger than anything they had simultaneously taken on before. It would also require the full endorsement of the business operations and the IT department.

How did Berkeley help?

Berkeley was asked to support the leadership team to answer the question “what is the best way for Wessex Water to move its work and asset management capability to a new level?”

Berkeley created a process that would enable the leadership team to explore the limit of possibilities for the company and then turn these into practical, rigorously means-tested implementation options. Over the next two months they worked as an integral part of the leadership team working through the following questions:

• What scope of business operations would need to be considered for transformation to guarantee long term growth for the business?
• What would be the possible sources of operational benefit and in what quantity could they be realised?
• What would the future operating model of the business need to look like?
• What would a transformation to this operating model cost both from a business change and technology investment point of view?
• What are the best possible options for implementing the new capability and which of these represented the best interests of both the consumer and investor?

Berkeley commissioned external research into the way other industries and companies had exploited technology to excel in work and asset management capability. The results enabled Berkeley to speed up the pace of the exercise and increase confidence in the conclusions.

Where are they now?

Two months later the operational and IT leadership teams presented a compelling business case to build work and asset management capability to the Executive Chairman, Director of Finance & Policy and investor. The investment was approved and the programme is now fully underway.