Identifying improvements to Thames Water’s wholesale long-term business planning approach

Thames Water PR19 Definition Phase

At price review 2019 (PR19)—when companies set out business plans for the next five years as scrutinized by the water industry economic regulator, Ofwat—Thames Water (TW) also had a longer-term ambition of embedding asset and business planning as a business-as-usual activity across their organization.

To support TW’s preparation, Stantec led an eight-week project definition phase with the aim of validating challenges ahead, determining how and where eight2O—a supply chain alliance—could best add value to the business plan preparation and submission, and determining the necessary costs and resources required. Our main challenge was the tight programme timeline in which multiple elements were reviewed, where each element needed to be aligned to TW’s own developing agenda. We used the project outputs to support the initial development of TW’s bottom-up business plan, embedding a long-term approach outside of the price review process.

This more efficient approach to business planning at PR19 saved Thames Water several million euros and focuses on delivering a cost-effective service and sustainable water and wastewater services for customers.