Calling urban innovators: The water sector needs you! 

By: Seemaab Naseem, Senior Associate, Ofwat Innovation Fund  

Last month, Ofwat’s Innovation Fund launched the Water Discovery Challenge, a £4 million competition for innovators from industries outside the water sector – including those working in urban planning and cities.

Water companies provide drinking water and wastewater services to over 50 million households in England and Wales, with a sewage network that could wrap around the world 13 times. With large ageing networks operating in the context of increasing demand and climate change, the sector faces undeniable and urgent challenges that require action now.

The vital task of delivering water relies on the careful planning of cities and urban environments, including the construction and maintenance of safe, climate-resilient, low-carbon, and innovative buildings, systems and infrastructure. Establishing these future-proofed, adaptable, urban environments is also a challenge faced by city planners, making innovators in this industry well-positioned to share bold ideas that could also transform the water sector.

The competition is incentivising solutions to tackle big issues for the water sector including boosting flood and drought resilience in urban environments, improving water efficiency, managing leaks, preventing pollution, prioritising sustainable practices and supporting vulnerable customers. There is no requirement for entrants to partner with a water company.

The goal is to open the sector to new ground-breaking insights and thinking that could benefit consumers and the environment. We need to respond and adapt to climate change, working towards clear common goals and ambitions.

Why urban planners can help revolutionise the water sector

Winners from previous Ofwat Innovation Fund competitions include numerous ideas that overlap with urban and city planning, construction and building – proving the vast potential for innovations driven by these industries. Ideas that have previously been rewarded include new thinking to boost water efficiency through innovative housing and commercial developments (e.g. through water recycling), bold ideas for improving flood and drought resilience in urban areas, as well as creative use of urban landscapes to manage rainfall to prevent flooding.

Previous winners include Project Zero, which is looking at how new housing developments can be more sustainable and water efficient through reducing water demand. The initiative will also seek to use new technologies to offset water consumption, ultimately aiming for total community water use post-build to be equivalent to before the new housing development was created. The idea is to use smaller and larger water-saving technologies to achieve this – ranging from smart shower heads to entire rainwater harvesting units.

Other winners include a project called Enabling Water Smart Communities which focuses on designing new urban environments to absorb excess water during heavy rain events and cope with sustained drought by recycling “greywater”. The Community-Centric Rainwater Management project will trial Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) – smart water butts – to help manage the flow of rainwater and reduce risk of flooding in paved urban areas.

These innovations prove the potential for urban-planning-based initiatives to address some of the biggest challenges facing the water sector today.

How you could win the Water Discovery Challenge

The Water Discovery Challenge will award up to 20 teams of the most promising innovators up to £50,000 to develop their ideas, with expert support and mentoring from water companies. Up to 10 will go on to win up to £450,000 to turn ideas into pilots.

In addition to financial incentives, successful teams will benefit from expert mentoring and capacity-building support, including access to insights and mentoring from water companies and support for scaling solutions for the extensive water network in England and Wales.

The Water Discovery Challenge closes on 5 April 2023. The competition is being delivered with innovation prize experts Challenge Works, alongside global engineering, sustainability and water sector experts Arup and Isle Utilities. To enter, visit waterinnovation.challenges.org.

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