The resilience of water and wastewater services is central to our strategic goals and duties, as well as those of water companies. The water sector faces risks from long term challenges such as climate change and population growth, which may place increased demands on assets and services.
Our proposed forward programme 2021-22 encourages the industry to improve its approach to asset resilience, working together to develop a maturity assessment to assess companies’ asset management capability, highlighting areas of best practice.
We have engaged with the sector, building on existing asset management frameworks, to co-create a bespoke asset management maturity assessment. This provided Ofwat and companies with a shared understanding of the range of asset management maturity in the sector; how mature the processes, teams, technologies and cultures are within companies for monitoring and managing asset health and operational resilience. It also helped to identify and share examples of best practice and innovation and to explore ways to address any gaps and risks. Overall, it supported Ofwat and companies to communicate more effectively and align our thinking in relation to asset health, asset management and their links to resilience.
Relevant documents
Asset resilience project – opening meeting slides – Ofwat
Asset management maturity assessment
Annex 1 – Overarching questions
Annex 2 – Strategy and planning
Annex 6 – Organisation and people
Annex 7 – Quantitative indicators (excel workbook)
Asset management maturity assessment lexicon
Asset management maturity assessment (AMMA) – insights and recommendations
In 2021 we published a document setting out the cross-cutting sector insights we have gained from assessing companies’ asset management maturity through a co-created self-assessment.
We have identified a number of recommendations for the sector and considerations for us at Ofwat that will help to improve the sector’s asset management maturity.
You can read the AMMA insights and recommendations report here.
The press release for this report can be found here.
The below infographic explains what an asset is in the context of this report.
