A half-day participatory, design-thinking, lively workshop and seminar session exploring the question: how can the global water industry realistically achieve the ambitious target of zero leakage?

New for 2019, we are introducing an informal, entertaining, quintessentially British networking experience featuring a 3-hour private cruise on the River Thames, a water-themed quiz produced and hosted exclusively for this event by an expert quizmaster and a traditional ‘pub grub’ winter-warming pie & mash supper followed by pudding, teas & coffees. Plenty of time will be set aside for casual networking to get ahead of the conversation in advance of the opening of the summit the following morning. Open to all delegates and strictly limited to max. 80 guests.

Day One — February 26 Morning

Looking outside the water industry to a global company that had to substantially pivot the business to embrace digital potential and a rapidly evolving market.

– What are the successful regulatory drivers that support utilities to deploy advanced technologies?
– How can governments support technology acceleration and help to mitigate risk? What more can policy makers be doing to move the dial and lead the industry forwards?
– Where has innovative or challenging policy / regulation been effectively deployed to create new markets? E.g. phosphorous removal, tough leakage targets. What are the lessons that can be applied to the future?
– How are utilities collaborating and co-creating innovation models?

– As the water industry gets smarter and smarter, where does technological advancement successfully meet customer service? How is this adoption driving efficiency and savings?
– Who is communicating excellently to stakeholders and how are they doing it?
– What do proactive communication plans look like that help conserve water to ensure there’s enough to meet growing demand?
– Are there any game changing technologies on the horizon?

– What are the critical success factors for a transformative collaboration, investment or a merger and acquisition? At what stage of the lifecycle is this likely to happen?
– Companies advance myriad strategies for creating value with acquisitions—but only a handful are likely to do so. Why is that?
– Which deals over the past 12-24 months have specific, well-articulated value creation ideas going in? What can we learn from the outcomes?
– To what extent do long-term wins depend on the talent and experience of the team vs technological brilliance?

Four start-ups pitch their technology and business models to a panel of three ‘dragons’, with questions from the audience.

Investors in water technology companies come together to discuss the hottest deals and investments of 2018 / 19 and share their insight into what the most exciting opportunities and challenges may be over the coming year.

Day One — February 26 Afternoon

Four joint presentations from service providers and their clients telling real world stories of where new technology has been deployed to great effect. Beyond theory, hear about what is excelling on the ground in terms of building capacity, saving money and boosting efficiency.

– Where are we seeing the best examples of optimisation and value across the water, energy and waste nexus?
– How are the barriers to accelerating adoption of a closed loop being overcome?
– Who is leading the way in cutting-edge energy recovery? How achievable is energy neutrality and who can we learn from?
– To what extent is the need to reduce expenditure on energy driving us towards decentralised models?

– Year on year, industrial end users continue to be met with ever-louder calls for diversifying water resources and cleaning up at source. How are leading end users approaching wastewater reuse and recycling within their businesses?
– What are the biggest hurdles to water reuse and recycling? How can we get buy-in from stakeholders?
– How can these projects be financed and what could the model look like?
– What areas of innovation are delivering most value to industrial end-users? Is there room for improvement?
– What are the opportunities for cloud-based asset management efficiencies in industrial water reuse?
– What other innovative methods of producing alternative water supplies are emerging?

Over the course of the day the Rethink production team will be keeping tabs on the hottest conversations and topics, bringing these together in real-time to close proceedings with themed, informal chats over drinks served at the table. There will be 2x 20 minute rotations.

Day Two — February 27 Morning

– How can we amplify the power of data to optimize decision making across water networks? Beyond raw data, how must utilities approach the Analytics of Things?
– What are the key challenges that arise with implementing cloud-based operations and artificial intelligence itself or is it the realignment of resources and operations that goes with it?
– What are the cast-iron examples of where employing IoT and AoT /AI has improved efficiency, resilience, predictive maintenance and / or driven down operational costs?
– What new business models are emerging as a result?
– What do we know now that we wish we’d known 5 years ago?

Four start-ups pitch their technology and business models to a panel of three ‘dragons’, with questions from the audience.

– 2018 has seen a surge of activity in the international desalination market: is Desal 2.0 on our doorstep? What might it look like?
– How far away are we from game-changing upgrades in application (i.e. scaled-up solar powered desal) and materials (i.e. graphene membranes)?
– Projected Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of the reverse osmosis membrane market is around 15.92% ($7.04 billion) by 2026 – will this create an economy of scale that will make desal significantly more commercially viable?
– Dispersion modelling of brine waste discharge: what do we do with high intensity brine for the future? What is the business case to deal with ever higher levels of physical discharge as plant building accelerates?
– With increasing occurrences of drought and water stress in currently abundant areas, where can we expect brand new desal markets to appear? What’s the timeline?

Day Two — February 27 Afternoon

We hear from representatives from 3 ‘mega cities’ who will explain how they are going about meeting some of the biggest water challenges on the planet.

– To what extent do water hubs deliver what they say they will? How successful are they at commercialising and scaling up tech in real terms?
– Water hubs are developed to cultivate innovation – what would such a network look like on global scale? How would it work?
– Water hubs thrive in a tightly-knit ecosystem belonging to a particular geography: is a ‘global water tech hub’ an oxymoron?
– What examples of technological cross-pollination have occurred between municipal hubs?
– If yes: who takes responsibility? What existing platforms could be adopted or acquired to form the bedrock of such an initiative?