UK Water Company

Project Brief

Our client was one of the UK’s leading water companies. A few months prior to entering the new regulatory period, our client had received its final determination from the regulator – Ofwat. In light of the determination it had finalised its business plan and identified the transformation programme that was implicit at the heart of the plan to deliver the outcome.

Barnsnape Consulting were invited to work with this client to define the programme to deliver the transformation.

What Barnsnape Did

Barnsnape deployed a small team of water industry aware consultants who could hit the ground running. The first task was to identify and agree at Executive level the roadmap that this transformation programme and other subsequent programmes would need to achieve over this regulatory five year period and beyond. This gave a strategic context from which could be extracted the immediate programme that would deliver the business plan and provide a corner stone for future programmes to build upon.

The programme was then scoped and over a three month period driven through an accelerated procurement process. The scoping was pragmatic and focused on the ‘art of the possible’ expressed in industry standard language that could be readily understood. The scope of work included Finance, HR, Supply Chain, Field Force Management and some elements of Asset Management. The procurement confirmed the preferred implementation partner as quickly as possible, thereby maximising the time period available for the programme to deliver benefit to this regulated business. The underpinning IT technical solution was SAP.

Following selection of the partner, Barnsnape undertook the analysis of the risks and contingencies for the delivery of the programme, enabling ongoing management of contingencies based upon a meaningful set of quantified risks to be prepared. This was a major input to the business case for delivery of the programme.

Based upon the earlier stages of work Barnsnape prepared a compelling executive level sanction paper enabling sanction for the entire programme. This was supported by stakeholder management analysis and reference visits to external benchmark sites.

Outcome and Benefits

Barnsnape rapidly deployed a team with expert skills in the water industry and the programme itself to rapidly create a programme for the client.

The benefit to the client was that from this five month assignment the client mobilsed to deliver, and by doing so maximised the benefit within the regulatory period.