Navigating AMP8: Balancing short-term compliance and long-term resilience

The UK water industry’s Asset Management Period 8 (AMP8), spanning 2025-2030, introduces a rigorous landscape as Ofwat intensifies its focus on performance metrics. Achieving these targets is crucial, impacting funding, reputational standing, and operational priorities. Utilities face the challenge of balancing immediate compliance with sustainable, long-term investments to meet Ofwat’s expectations for AMP8 and future cycles. 

The critical path to meeting Ofwat’s targets

AMP8 emphasises several key regulatory focus areas, such as: 

• Leakage reduction:  Minimising water loss is paramount for resource conservation and efficiency. 

• Customer Satisfaction (C-Mex & D-Mex): Enhancing customer experience and developer services is essential for improved satisfaction scores. 

• Resilience and sustainability: Building infrastructure capable of withstanding environmental and operational challenges ensures long-term service reliability. 

• Affordability and service accessibility: Providing cost-effective and accessible services is vital for customer trust and regulatory compliance. 

Utilities must align with essential milestones and deadlines to address these focus areas effectively. Failure to meet key performance indicators can lead to financial penalties, diminished customer trust, and increased regulatory scrutiny. 

Investment opportunities for meeting compliance goals

To navigate AMP8 successfully, utilities should consider both short-term and long-term investment strategies: 

Short-term wins: 

• Rapid deployment of digital tools:  Implementing digital solutions can enhance real-time operational efficiency, allowing for swift responses to emerging issues. 

• Leveraging AI-driven analytics: Utilising artificial intelligence to reduce leakage run-time and enhance network performance can lead to significant reductions in water loss and service disruptions. 

• Data-driven regulatory reporting: Employing advanced data analytics facilitates faster and more accurate regulatory reporting, ensuring compliance and transparency. 

Long-term strategic investments: 

• Enhancing workforce efficiency and safety: AI-powered digital platforms can streamline workflows, improve decision-making, and boost overall workforce productivity and safety. 

• Integrating customer-centric solutions: Adopting technologies, such as FYLD’s customer self-service tool—ShowMe, that focus on customer needs leads to higher C-Mex scores, and therefore, better alignment with AMP8 targets. 

Striking the right balance: Operational efficiency vs. strategic growth

It’s crucial to avoid reactive fixes that offer short-term gains but fail to contribute to long-term resilience. FYLD’s real-time, remote visibility, smart workflows, and AI-powered risk assessments enable data-driven decision-making, while simultaneously transforming operational processes within your utility to ensure long-term optimisation. Additionally, collaboration among multiple stakeholders is essential in executing effective deployments. FYLD’s seamless, in-app communication offers rapid efficiency for field-to-office communication, helping you reduce downtime from unnecessary site visits and lengthy phone calls. 

These day-to-day operational changes save our partners significant time and help them maximise the impact of their resources, giving them more time to focus their attention where it's needed most.

How FYLD is driving regulatory success

With FYLD, the results are driving change for our customers around the world. In the UK alone, our water utility partners are seeing results such as: 

• Reducing leakage run time by 1.4 days: Within just 12 weeks of deploying FYLD, a water utility provider in the UK reduced leakage run time by 1.4 days (down from 5 days on average) resulting in 2 megalitres of water per day.

• Reducing pollution incidents by 34%: Southern Water achieved this milestone in 2023 through infrastructure upgrades, proactive workflows, and improved incident management supported by FYLD. 

• Preventing service damage and enhancing safety: By utilising FYLD, CLC Utility Services has achieved significant improvements in operational efficiency and continues to successfully reduce and prevent high-risk incidents during their operations. CLC’s use of FYLD led to the prevention of several potential service damage incidents. 

The roadmap to AMP8 success

To stay on track for AMP8 success, utilities should adopt relevant technologies that swiftly address their short-term challenges, such as reducing water loss to leakage and managing their workforce more effectively. However, they should also ensure these new technologies have the scalability to adhere to their long-term goals by developing an agile, data-driven approach to their entire utility workforce. Implementing these innovative tools not only returns the quantitative results utilities in the UK need, but they also help reshape how organisations operate, facilitating a forward-thinking mindset among their entire workforce. 

AI and digital solutions provide a clear path to regulatory success in AMP8. Beyond short-term wins like reducing water loss and improving customer satisfaction, these tools generate long-term success by improving cost-efficiency and optimising workforce productivity. 

To explore how these solutions can benefit your organisation, book your personalised demo today.