Benchmarking the future of the industry

Water Futures for the South East, Towards 2050

Southern Water brought us in to work together to develop Water Futures, a document looking to the future of the South East region of the United Kingdom. Water Futures features six connected essays: Changing Climate, Ecosystem Thinking, Collaboration Re-defined, Digital Transformational Change, Nanotechnology Advances, and Cultural and Social Change.

The development of this content—including a range of future scenarios to determine emerging challenges—helped Southern Water co-imagine the future with its customers, using the content generated to support customer panels discussing asset and service resilience. The next step? Southern Water hosted a roundtable, presenting the output of Water Futures to strategic stakeholders. We presented Water Futures and welcomed discussion and feedback from regulators, non-governmental organizations, supply chain partners, and environmental groups.

Water Futures provided a platform to engage customers and stakeholders at a regional and community level, gathering feedback that demonstrably shaped Southern Water’s business plan. Southern Water’s response has been to create five transformational initiatives which will be co-created and co-delivered with communities in the region.