The UK water industry: towards a resilient and sustainable future

Dame Sue Ion FRS is Hon President of the National Skills Academy for Nuclear. She was previously Chairman of the UK Nuclear Innovation Research Advisory Board (NIRAB). She represents the UK on a number of international review and oversight committees for the nuclear sector including the Euratom Science and Technology Committee which she chaired until late 2018. She was the only non-US member of the US Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee on which she has served from 2005-2020.

Sue spent 27 years with British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) rising to the position of Chief Technology Officer in 1992, a post she held until 2006 when she assumed a number of mainly voluntary roles in Science and Engineering, including membership of the UK Council for Science and Technology and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). She was Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering 2002-2008 and chaired its MacRobert Committee 2013-2019. Sue was Deputy Chair of the Board of the University of Manchester until September 2018 and currently serves on the Board of the University of Central Lancashire.

Her core expertise is in materials science and engineering associated with the nuclear sector. Sue is a member of the Chief Scientific Advisor for Wales’s Science and Innovation Advisory Council. She has been a Visiting Professor in the Department of Materials at Imperial College since 2006, holds an Honorary Professorship at the University of Manchester and is now Chair of the Royal Society Science, Industry and Translation Committee.

Louise Heathwaite is a hydrochemist who combines field and modelling research to understand the environmental impact of land use on freshwater quality. Her work on nutrient runoff from agricultural land informs our understanding of eutrophication in rivers and underpins diffuse pollution models worldwide. She advanced in-situ high-frequency monitoring of nitrogen and phosphorus fractions in rivers providing unique insight into nutrient cycling that support policy interventions to reduce water quality degradation.

She is a distinguished professor in the Lancaster Environment Centre and Executive Chair of the Natural Environment Research Council, UKRI. She is also chair of the Science Advisory Council of the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and independent commissioner for the Geospatial Commission in the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). She previously served as Chief Scientific Adviser to the Scottish Government for Rural Affairs, Food and Environment.

Louise originally graduated from the University of East Anglia with a first-class degree in Environmental Sciences and has a PhD in Hydrochemistry from Bristol University. She was awarded a CBE in 2018 for services to scientific research and scientific advice to government and elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2023.

Jim Hall is Professor of Climate and Environmental Risks in the University of Oxford. Prof Hall is internationally recognised for his research on risk analysis and decision making under uncertainty for water resource systems, flood and coastal risk management, infrastructure systems and adaptation to climate change. Professor Hall is a member of the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology, Commissioner of the National Infrastructure Commission and Vice President of the Institution of Civil Engineers. His group developed the first national water resource systems simulation model for England and Wales which is being used to plan water infrastructure in England. Prof Hall conceived of, and now chairs, the UK’s Data and Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure (DAFNI). He was editor of the journal Water Resources Research from 2017 to 2022.

Jo Bradley has worked on many aspects of water management during her 30-year career in the UK. She completed 28 years at the Environment Agency where she focussed on many pollution prevention topics but in the last decade, Jo's attention has been on pollution from urban surfaces and roads.

She worked for Sustainable Drainage Systems (SDS) Limited for four years, specifying stormwater treatment devices in sustainable drainage system schemes.

In September 2020, she became Director of Operations for Stormwater Shepherds UK where she is now dedicated to the pursuit of better stormwater management, and the development of a funding mechanism to deliver that management.

Bruce Jefferson is Professor of Water Engineering at Cranfield University. A chemical engineer with a BEng and PhD from Loughborough University, he joined the staff in Water Sciences at Cranfield in 1997. He was subsequently appointed to the post of Senior Research Fellow in 2003 and the Senior Lecturer in 2006. Other current posts include visiting positions at RMIT (Australia), the University of New South Wales (Australia) and the University of Johannesburg (South Africa).

Professor Jefferson's research interests involve understanding how the underlying process pathways can be better managed to deliver a paradigm shift in how we apply technology for sewage treatment and drinking water production. Current activities involve work on, resource recovery, anaerobic sewage treatment, low energy wastewater processes for nutrient removal, control of NOM, algae and micropollutants in catchments and treatment, and advanced oxidation processes.

James Curtis is Head of Leakage at Affinity Water. Leaving university with a degree in Environmental Studies, James has worked in the water industry for over 20 years. This has been predominantly in below-ground asset management, specialising in leakage management for more than half that time.

Having previously turned around failing leakage performance at Cambridge Water and South Staffordshire Water, he joined Affinity Water in 2021 to help deliver one of the largest percentage leakage reductions in AMP7 (the seventh Asset Management Period planned by the UK water industry, running from 2020-25) and prepare the company for the journey to a 50% reduction in leakage by 2050.

Jim Hall is Professor of Climate and Environmental Risks in the University of Oxford. Prof Hall is internationally recognised for his research on risk analysis and decision making under uncertainty for water resource systems, flood and coastal risk management, infrastructure systems and adaptation to climate change. Professor Hall is a member of the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology, Commissioner of the National Infrastructure Commission and Vice President of the Institution of Civil Engineers. His group developed the first national water resource systems simulation model for England and Wales which is being used to plan water infrastructure in England. Prof Hall conceived of, and now chairs, the UK’s Data and Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure (DAFNI). He was editor of the journal Water Resources Research from 2017 to 2022.

Jo Bradley has worked on many aspects of water management during her 30-year career in the UK. She completed 28 years at the Environment Agency where she focussed on many pollution prevention topics but in the last decade, Jo's attention has been on pollution from urban surfaces and roads.

She worked for Sustainable Drainage Systems (SDS) Limited for four years, specifying stormwater treatment devices in sustainable drainage system schemes.

In September 2020, she became Director of Operations for Stormwater Shepherds UK where she is now dedicated to the pursuit of better stormwater management, and the development of a funding mechanism to deliver that management.

Bruce Jefferson is Professor of Water Engineering at Cranfield University. A chemical engineer with a BEng and PhD from Loughborough University, he joined the staff in Water Sciences at Cranfield in 1997. He was subsequently appointed to the post of Senior Research Fellow in 2003 and the Senior Lecturer in 2006. Other current posts include visiting positions at RMIT (Australia), the University of New South Wales (Australia) and the University of Johannesburg (South Africa).

Professor Jefferson's research interests involve understanding how the underlying process pathways can be better managed to deliver a paradigm shift in how we apply technology for sewage treatment and drinking water production. Current activities involve work on, resource recovery, anaerobic sewage treatment, low energy wastewater processes for nutrient removal, control of NOM, algae and micropollutants in catchments and treatment, and advanced oxidation processes.

James Curtis is Head of Leakage at Affinity Water. Leaving university with a degree in Environmental Studies, James has worked in the water industry for over 20 years. This has been predominantly in below-ground asset management, specialising in leakage management for more than half that time.

Having previously turned around failing leakage performance at Cambridge Water and South Staffordshire Water, he joined Affinity Water in 2021 to help deliver one of the largest percentage leakage reductions in AMP7 (the seventh Asset Management Period planned by the UK water industry, running from 2020-25) and prepare the company for the journey to a 50% reduction in leakage by 2050.

Steve Hanslow is Head of Water & Waste Water, Siemens UK & Ireland, and has worked at Siemens for more than 25 years. As a result, he understands the issues facing the UK water industry and works closely alongside Global Water Sector HQ advising on the challenges to develop value based solutions and technologies for the water industry.

Steve also oversees a number of teams, closely collaborating with the supply chain to meet the challenges around asset performance, operational efficiency, and data acquisition and visualisation, alongside ongoing themes within the Water & Waste Water sector, including: the Internet of Things, automation, Industry 4.0, digitisation, productivity, and Connected Manufacturing.

Fabio Bacci is a Chartered Water and Environmental Manager specialising in emerging pollutants. He was awarded his PhD by University College Cork in 2017 and is currently an MBA candidate at the University of Limerick.

In his capacity as Innovation Manager of the Glanua Group, Dr Bacci works on business development for innovation, adhering to the pragmatic principle that progress must be governed by an equilibrium between environmental stewardship and the essential advancements necessary to ensure societal well-being.

Dr Bacci founded the British Water Micropollutants Focus Group in 2020 and acted as convenor of the group. His ambition is to continue cultivating an ethic of contribution to make emerging water quality challenges a collective mission of the water industry. He is currently researching into non-financial disclosure of sustainability- and climate-related information in annual reports by public limited companies with the view to elucidating the true commitment of these actors to safeguarding the environment.

Pete Vale is the Carbon and Circular Economy Architect in Severn Trent's Innovation Team. He has a degree in Environmental Science from the University of Sheffield and a master's degree in water and wastewater engineering from Cranfield University.

Pete has worked in R&D and innovation in the water industry for the last 20 years and has played an important role in developing and implementing Severn Trent's wastewater treatment strategy. Over the past decade he has worked on nutrient removal and recovery processes, removal of emerging contaminants and low energy processes some of which have now been implemented at full scale. His current area of focus is on developing and evaluating technologies that will deliver low carbon, low energy, material recovery treatment flowsheets that will help Severn Trent deliver on its commitment to be net zero carbon emitters by 2030.

Prof Julie A. McCann is Professor of Computer Systems at Imperial College London (IC), where she leads the Adaptive Embedded Systems Engineering Research Group, is Director for Imperial Centre for Smart Connected Futures, Co-Directors of the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Cities and the NEC Smart Water Systems Lab and has many other substantive projects with industry and academia with a focus on networking and sensing/actuation infrastructures to support environments such as smart cities, water and gas networks, energy/water/food nexus, precision farming and has a patented sensing infrastructure for sensorless industrial equipment monitoring. Her research centres on highly decentralized and self-organizing, scalable embedded frugal computing systems. Publishing in A* venues, she is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and is the Associate Editor for ACM TAAS, Chair for the ACM SASO, IEEE SECON, SMARTCOMP has been on the programme committee for IEEE INFOCOM, ACM UBICOMP and many more.

Prof Julie A. McCann is Professor of Computer Systems at Imperial College London (IC), where she leads the Adaptive Embedded Systems Engineering Research Group, is Director for Imperial Centre for Smart Connected Futures, Co-Directors of the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Cities and the NEC Smart Water Systems Lab and has many other substantive projects with industry and academia with a focus on networking and sensing/actuation infrastructures to support environments such as smart cities, water and gas networks, energy/water/food nexus, precision farming and has a patented sensing infrastructure for sensorless industrial equipment monitoring. Her research centres on highly decentralized and self-organizing, scalable embedded frugal computing systems. Publishing in A* venues, she is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and is the Associate Editor for ACM TAAS, Chair for the ACM SASO, IEEE SECON, SMARTCOMP has been on the programme committee for IEEE INFOCOM, ACM UBICOMP and many more.

Pete Vale is the Carbon and Circular Economy Architect in Severn Trent's Innovation Team. He has a degree in Environmental Science from the University of Sheffield and a master's degree in water and wastewater engineering from Cranfield University.

Pete has worked in R&D and innovation in the water industry for the last 20 years and has played an important role in developing and implementing Severn Trent's wastewater treatment strategy. Over the past decade he has worked on nutrient removal and recovery processes, removal of emerging contaminants and low energy processes some of which have now been implemented at full scale. His current area of focus is on developing and evaluating technologies that will deliver low carbon, low energy, material recovery treatment flowsheets that will help Severn Trent deliver on its commitment to be net zero carbon emitters by 2030.

Steve Hanslow is Head of Water & Waste Water, Siemens UK & Ireland, and has worked at Siemens for more than 25 years. As a result, he understands the issues facing the UK water industry and works closely alongside Global Water Sector HQ advising on the challenges to develop value based solutions and technologies for the water industry.

Steve also oversees a number of teams, closely collaborating with the supply chain to meet the challenges around asset performance, operational efficiency, and data acquisition and visualisation, alongside ongoing themes within the Water & Waste Water sector, including: the Internet of Things, automation, Industry 4.0, digitisation, productivity, and Connected Manufacturing.

Fabio Bacci is a Chartered Water and Environmental Manager specialising in emerging pollutants. He was awarded his PhD by University College Cork in 2017 and is currently an MBA candidate at the University of Limerick.

In his capacity as Innovation Manager of the Glanua Group, Dr Bacci works on business development for innovation, adhering to the pragmatic principle that progress must be governed by an equilibrium between environmental stewardship and the essential advancements necessary to ensure societal well-being.

Dr Bacci founded the British Water Micropollutants Focus Group in 2020 and acted as convenor of the group. His ambition is to continue cultivating an ethic of contribution to make emerging water quality challenges a collective mission of the water industry. He is currently researching into non-financial disclosure of sustainability- and climate-related information in annual reports by public limited companies with the view to elucidating the true commitment of these actors to safeguarding the environment.

Professor Chris Whitty is Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England, the UK government’s Chief Medical Adviser and head of the public health profession. He represents the UK on the Executive Board of the World Health Organization.

Chris is a practising NHS Consultant Physician at University College London Hospitals (UCLH) and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, and Gresham Professor of Physic at Gresham College.

Chris is an epidemiologist and has undertaken research and worked as a doctor in the UK, Africa and Asia. He was Professor of Public and International Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) before becoming CMO.

Chris was the Chief Scientific Adviser for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) from January 2016 to August 2021, with overall responsibility for the department’s research and development, including being head of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), the government’s major funder of clinical, public health, social care and translational research.

Chris was the interim Government Chief Scientific Adviser from 2017 to 2018, including during the Novichok poisonings. Before that, he was the Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for International Development (DFID), which included leading technical work on the West Africa Ebola outbreak and other international emergencies.

Maria is a Chartered Engineer and a Technical Director for Decarbonisation at Mott MacDonald. Her specialism is in infrastructure planning and decarbonisation. She is the lead author of PAS 2080 (2016 and 2023), global standard for managing infrastructure carbon that meets World Trade Organization requirements, and co-author of the UK HM Treasury Infrastructure Carbon Review.

Maria has worked with many infrastructure asset owners and their supply chains to help define their carbon management strategies and embed carbon management into infrastructure delivery programmes of work through best practice. She is a member of the UK Green Construction Board and has been involved in various Industry Forums to help shape the decarbonisation agenda, including the Institute of Civil Engineers Carbon Project.

She is a visiting Lecturer on Sustainability and Low Carbon Practices at Cranfield University, a Member of the Industrial Advisory Panel and is also a member of the UK Water Net Zero Expert Panel.

David Butler is as an internationally-recognised academic, manager, mentor and consultant in the water sector. He is professor of water engineering, a chartered civil engineer and a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Chartered Institution of Water & Environmental Management.

Following positions at consultant Arups, London South Bank University and Imperial College London, he is formerly Head of Engineering and currently Co-Director of the Centre for Water Systems at the University of Exeter. He is an expert in urban water management with specialisms including sewerage, urban drainage, flooding, water harvesting and reuse, sustainability and resilience, water-energy interactions and digital systems. He has published widely including over 350 technical papers, key texts and several practice-based reports. He is co-founder and emeritus editor-in-chief of the Urban Water Journal.

Evina Katsou is Professor and Course Director of the Water Engineering MSc at Brunel University London. She leads the Water and Environmental Engineering group with 16 postdoctoral researchers and PhD students. She has authored 110 publications, has 12 book chapters, has made 100 presentations in International Conferences, has been the editor in 2 books, and has made 24 invited talks in conferences, renowned Universities and Research centres.

Over the last eight years, Prof Katsou has developed a new research line at Brunel University: the deployment of data analytics methods and mechanistic models to identify and reconstruct complex relationships between observed and latent process variables in wastewater/water treatment plants. Her research is leading to measurement, control and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions of treatment processes, and is being adopted to set strategies and plans for developing the AI-Based Water Engineering Solutions.

Prof Katsou's research also focuses on the development and implementation of frameworks for sustainability and circularity measurement and assessment. She has participated in 40 research projects, being the coordinator and principal investigator for 27 projects (research and industrial), focusing on wastewater treatment, resource recovery and on the development and implementation of methodologies and customized tools to support decision making in the water industry.

Alex is a Chartered Environmentalist who is passionate about supporting the water industry to deliver its Net Zero goals. He has worked in the water industry since 2010 in a variety of roles with one thing in common: reducing carbon and better accounting for carbon emissions.

Alex is currently the Carbon & Sustainability Manager for Anglian Water's @One Alliance working for Skanska. Alex and his team are responsible for developing the carbon reduction strategy and supporting colleagues and supply chain to achieve @One's carbon reduction goals within its £1bn design and construction programme.

His current interests lie in reducing whole life carbon through enhanced design and decision making processes, enabled by better data and visualisation. He is an advocate for carbon literacy to underpin everything, supporting all colleagues and suppliers to improve their understanding of carbon and climate issues.

Evina Katsou is Professor and Course Director of the Water Engineering MSc at Brunel University London. She leads the Water and Environmental Engineering group with 16 postdoctoral researchers and PhD students. She has authored 110 publications, has 12 book chapters, has made 100 presentations in International Conferences, has been the editor in 2 books, and has made 24 invited talks in conferences, renowned Universities and Research centres.

Over the last eight years, Prof Katsou has developed a new research line at Brunel University: the deployment of data analytics methods and mechanistic models to identify and reconstruct complex relationships between observed and latent process variables in wastewater/water treatment plants. Her research is leading to measurement, control and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions of treatment processes, and is being adopted to set strategies and plans for developing the AI-Based Water Engineering Solutions.

Prof Katsou's research also focuses on the development and implementation of frameworks for sustainability and circularity measurement and assessment. She has participated in 40 research projects, being the coordinator and principal investigator for 27 projects (research and industrial), focusing on wastewater treatment, resource recovery and on the development and implementation of methodologies and customized tools to support decision making in the water industry.

Maria is a Chartered Engineer and a Technical Director for Decarbonisation at Mott MacDonald. Her specialism is in infrastructure planning and decarbonisation. She is the lead author of PAS 2080 (2016 and 2023), global standard for managing infrastructure carbon that meets World Trade Organization requirements, and co-author of the UK HM Treasury Infrastructure Carbon Review.

Maria has worked with many infrastructure asset owners and their supply chains to help define their carbon management strategies and embed carbon management into infrastructure delivery programmes of work through best practice. She is a member of the UK Green Construction Board and has been involved in various Industry Forums to help shape the decarbonisation agenda, including the Institute of Civil Engineers Carbon Project.

She is a visiting Lecturer on Sustainability and Low Carbon Practices at Cranfield University, a Member of the Industrial Advisory Panel and is also a member of the UK Water Net Zero Expert Panel.

David Butler is as an internationally-recognised academic, manager, mentor and consultant in the water sector. He is professor of water engineering, a chartered civil engineer and a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Chartered Institution of Water & Environmental Management.

Following positions at consultant Arups, London South Bank University and Imperial College London, he is formerly Head of Engineering and currently Co-Director of the Centre for Water Systems at the University of Exeter. He is an expert in urban water management with specialisms including sewerage, urban drainage, flooding, water harvesting and reuse, sustainability and resilience, water-energy interactions and digital systems. He has published widely including over 350 technical papers, key texts and several practice-based reports. He is co-founder and emeritus editor-in-chief of the Urban Water Journal.

Alex is a Chartered Environmentalist who is passionate about supporting the water industry to deliver its Net Zero goals. He has worked in the water industry since 2010 in a variety of roles with one thing in common: reducing carbon and better accounting for carbon emissions.

Alex is currently the Carbon & Sustainability Manager for Anglian Water's @One Alliance working for Skanska. Alex and his team are responsible for developing the carbon reduction strategy and supporting colleagues and supply chain to achieve @One's carbon reduction goals within its £1bn design and construction programme.

His current interests lie in reducing whole life carbon through enhanced design and decision making processes, enabled by better data and visualisation. He is an advocate for carbon literacy to underpin everything, supporting all colleagues and suppliers to improve their understanding of carbon and climate issues.

Professor Gideon Henderson FRS is a geochemist whose research focuses on the influence of marine chemistry on the carbon cycle and climate, and on understanding long-term climate change by study of the past. A particular expertise is the use of natural radioactive isotopes to establish the rates of oceanic processes, and the timing of past climate events. He seeks to understand components of the climate system with relevance to the future, including changes in rainfall, sea level, permafrost, and ocean circulation. He has played a leading role in establishing the international and UK GEOTRACES programmes, investigating the trace-element chemistry of the oceans. Gideon is Head of the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Oxford. Further details are at: http://www.earth.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/academic/gideonh

Mike Woolgar has over 40 years' practical experience in the water, urban development and renewable energy sectors in the UK, Europe and the lesser developed world. In UK he has worked on regulation, policy, advisory services, due diligence and expert services, and project preparation in the regulated utilities, flood risk management, and resources sectors. He has extensive international experience of infrastructure development including regulated and private sector water and waste systems, water resource planning, water systems development engineering, climate change and sustainable energy. He has worked in over 40 countries in Africa, Asia and the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council).

He is currently adviser to Ofwat on the development of the Haweswater Aqueduct Resilience Programme Direct Procurement for Customers (HARP DPC), the first of its kind in the water industry. He led the Independent Expert Group examining the severe flooding in London in 2021, is Lenders Technical Adviser on water and sanitation projects in Israel and Serbia. He also provides water supply and flood risk management advisory services to defence sites in UK and overseas, leads design development of the Grand Union Canal water resources transfer scheme and supports water company clients on water resources planning.

Professor Carolyn Roberts is Emeritus Professor of Environment at Gresham College London, and a water and environment consultant. Her early career was as an academic at the University of Exeter, Head of the School of Environment at the University of Gloucestershire, and subsequently in Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford where she directed the national Environmental Sustainability Knowledge Transfer Network, on behalf of Innovate UK. She has been Chair of the Institution of Environmental Sciences, Chair of Society for the Environment, and is currently Fleet Warden of the Worshipful Company of Water Conservators, one of London's modern Livery Companies.

Her research focussed on the impacts of development on rivers and groundwater in the UK, the tropics and the Mediterranean. For many years she has run her own consultancy, advising developers and local authorities on minimising damage to the natural environment, and other aspects of Environmental Impact Assessment. She was Technical Advisor to Gloucestershire County Council following the extreme River Severn floods of 2007, and has often advised the police on the movement of (dead) human bodies along rivers and canals. She continues to advise Innovate UK on grant applications for technical innovation.

Beth is an experienced senior leader with a background in economic regulation and policy. She is currently the Ofwat Director responsible for water resources and environmental planning, including Ofwat's £100m Water Efficiency Fund.

Previously, Beth was Head of Competition and Enforcement at the Civil Aviation Authority. Earlier in her career, Beth worked in the Office of Rail and Road, and state government roles in Australia.

Tom Stephenson has over 40 years of professional experience in water and wastewater treatment. He is currently an Ambassador for British Water, the trade association representing the water sector supply chain in the UK and internationally. He was previously Chairman (2010-12) and a Board Director (2000-05, 2010-2014) of British Water.

Professor Stephenson is a Non-Executive Director at Marsh Industries, a family-owned company that is the leading UK manufacturer of package wastewater treatment plants, separators and related products. He is also a part-time Professor of Water Sciences at Cranfield University where for over 30 years he has worked with all 10 of the water and sewage utility companies in England and Wales. His academic expertise is focussed on technologies for water, wastewater and sludge treatment, including water reuse.

Other activities include membership of Water UK's Net Zero Carbon Panel and the Lee Kuan Yew Singapore International Water Prize jury. He set up Water Innovate Ltd, a Cranfield University spinout which was sold to Bluewater Bio Ltd where he was a Board Advisor until 2021.

Professor Stephenson is a graduate Biochemist from the University of York and has a PhD in Civil Engineering from Imperial College London. He is a Chartered Engineer (CEng) and a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (FIChemE). In 2010 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng).