How we work with universities

We spoke with Tony to find out more about his role and how Welsh Water works with academia. What does your honorary professorship at Cardiff University involve?

I am a board member at the Cardiff University Water Research Institute and advise on the running of the institution, research priorities, and so on. I'm also heavily involved in applying for funding for the university, for example, from the UK Research Institute (UKRI), with many of the funding submissions aligning directly with our own research needs.

The Water Research Institute at Cardiff University works mainly in partnership with Bath, Bristol and Exeter as part of the GW4 Alliance of Universities. Together, the water-related faculties of the GW4 form the strongest UK-based group of water-related experts I know of. It’s won several million in research funding so far and undertakes research which is very much focused at the water sector. What industrial partners like me bring to the university (I like to think) is we're able to help shape the research to have much greater societal impact, and application in our business than it otherwise would.

We tap into the GW4 and support the PhDs that the group sponsors, as well as specific research projects, often to do with the natural environment in Wales - subjects like habitat creation and the environmental impact of pollutants.

Bottom line is that the GW4’s work has the potential to make a real difference to what we do as a company. We can get fantastic value from its research for our customers - much better value than if we commissioned the research alone or even with other Water Companies. With the collaboration of other water industry colleagues and our regulators, together we combine our resources to squeeze every drop of value from the university’s research.

In general what is Welsh Water’s approach to working with universities?

Our approach is one of partnership. We don’t have the specialist expertise that universities have. By seeing and working with them as partners, we can tap into their expertise and equally they can tap into ours and our practical experience, so enabling the research to have real practical application and thus - impact. Together we can help one another make research more valuable, more readily apply that research and turn it into useful knowledge – for example new government policy, new products or technology that benefit wider society.

Which university research projects has Welsh Water been involved in recently?

Here’s just a few we’ve been working on:

• Cardiff and Bangor University – in 2020 we joined forces to monitoring covid in the Wales’ general population
• Bangor University – predicting flood risk and water quality from combined environmental hazards using rainfall data
• Swansea University - research that looked at the feasibility of using Ozone to regenerate granular activated carbon in situ rather than using thermal regeneration

How important is it to Welsh Water that we work with academia?

I see this work as vital. I cant see how we would be able to deliver our company vision if we didn’t tap into and leverage academia’s expertise. When we look at the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, it very clearly says we should co develop and co produce in Wales, which is exactly what we do with the Universities. The Act effectively requires us to partner with others so everyone can bring their respective strengths to the table and we can all mutually prosper. Academia is an intrinsic part of the knowledge economy and if we're to exploit that knowledge to deal with climate change, biodiversity loss, as well as some of the social challenges Wales has, then we simply have to leverage our best talents, and they ours.