Chris Steele, Director of Asset Management services at Binnies, shares his thoughts following the World Water-Tech Innovation Summit
As I walked past London’s latest political art installation, ‘Fountain of Filth’, on my way to the World Water-Tech Innovation Summit in February, the irony was hard to miss. It was a fitting reminder that, despite ongoing discussions around innovation, digitalisation and reform, the water sector is ultimately judged by the outcomes the public can see, smell and experience. That remains the real test.
The 2026 World Water-Tech Innovation Summit brought together utilities, regulators, investors and technology providers to explore how the sector can move from fragmented innovation towards system-wide transformation and resilience.
From my perspective as an asset management director, the strongest signal from the event was not simply that innovation is accelerating. It is that the strategic context around water is changing in a way that should now make meaningful integration possible.
Policy reform as a catalyst for integration
The publication of the UK Government’s white paper A new vision for water and the Welsh Government’s green paper Shaping the Future of Water Governance in Wales has clearly helped shift the conversation. It sets out reforms aimed at creating a more integrated and efficient whole system, with greater emphasis on long-term resilience, accountability and delivery, rather than a narrow utility-focused approach. That policy direction was reflected in the summit itself. The tone has moved on from “what we might do” or “what we need to do” towards “here is evidence of what we are already doing”. That matters, as it suggests the sector is beginning to move from aspiration to execution.
Water Minister Emma Hardy’s keynote speech reinforced that message clearly. Her emphasis on long-term collaboration, reform and workforce capability was notable, particularly the link she drew between sector reform, infrastructure modernisation and the creation of 30,000 skilled jobs. More importantly, it showed that resilience is no longer being viewed solely as an engineering challenge but as a whole-system issue in which policy, people, capital, data and assets must align. That broader perspective also aligns closely with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and its long-term focus on sustainability and resilience.
That alignment is essential because one of the clearest themes from the summit was that many good things are happening, but too often in isolation. There is no shortage of innovation. Across the event, examples ranged from predictive asset performance, physics-based models to reduce process emissions and circular economy thinking around water reuse through to AI-enabled knowledge capture to address the so-called “silver tsunami” of workforce retirement. The agenda itself reflected this breadth, with themes spanning asset management efficiency, adaptive smart networks, water reuse and circularity, and regulation for a digital water future.
Yet that breadth is also part of the problem. The sector still has a tendency to generate high-value initiatives as stand-alone solutions rather than as components of an overall operating and investment system. The burden remains largely on individual utilities to work out how these initiatives fit together. That is difficult enough within a single organisation; it becomes even harder when viewed at regional or multi-agency scale.
This is especially relevant to nature-based solutions and regional water system planning. If we are serious about integrated system planning, we must confront a basic truth – we cannot make better regional decisions without sharing the data that informs them. Data is what turns ambition into evidence and evidence into transparent decision-making. Without a stronger data-sharing culture, we risk talking about integrated planning while continuing to make fragmented choices.
The importance of long‑term, patient capital
That is why I found the discussion around five-, ten- and even twenty-five-year investment horizons particularly encouraging. The language of “patient capital” is important. It suggests a growing recognition that resilience is built through sustained, deliberate investment decisions, not short-term programme thinking. But longer time horizons create value only if digital, data and asset-health considerations are embedded directly into the refurbishment, replacement and enhancement cycle. If they sit outside core capital and operational investment decisions as separate transformation programmes, their impact will always be constrained.
This, to me, is the crux of strategic transformation in water. The next step is not simply to do more pilots, deploy more dashboards or add more innovation projects. It is to change investment decision criteria so that measurable value can be assigned to data-driven decisions across the asset life cycle. That means being able to demonstrate, in practical terms, how better data, predictive insight and integrated digital capability reduce risk, improve performance, extend asset life, show tangible value and strengthen resilience.
Predictive asset health is a good example. Most people in the sector now understand the principle. The question is no longer whether anticipating failure is better than reacting to it. The question is whether utilities can consistently value that foresight in business cases, interventions and system planning. The same applies to circular economy solutions, water reuse and wider resilience measures. The technology case is often clear, but the challenge is embedding those capabilities into mainstream asset investment logic.
AI’s potential in water system transformation
AI was another defining theme across the summit, although the maturity of use cases varied significantly. Some applications were focused on knowledge acquisition and workforce support and others on process optimisation, emissions reduction, predictive performance or even customer sentiment analysis for major capital schemes. That variety is promising, but it also highlights the risk of AI becoming another layer of disconnected activity.
I believe AI has a bigger role to play in bringing initiatives together across the asset life cycle, particularly where it can connect engineering knowledge, operational context, asset criticality, performance data and investment choices. But AI will not rescue weak fundamentals. It cannot compensate for unclear outcomes, poor data quality or fragmented information models. The basics still matter – understand the decision you are trying to improve, define the outcome you are trying to achieve and ensure the underlying data is fit for purpose.
My overall reflection from London is a positive one. The sector is moving in the right direction. Policy momentum is getting stronger, and the conversation around asset health is maturing. There is more evidence of delivery, and there is a growing willingness to think across longer time horizons. But progress will remain initiative led; therefore, outcomes will be limited until innovation is treated not as an adjunct to the system but as part of how the system itself is planned, funded and operated.
Strategic transformation in water will not come from any single technology, programme or headline announcement. It will come from joining up what already exists, including policy reform, data transparency, patient capital, predictive asset health, AI, circular economy principles and regional system planning. The opportunity now is to connect those parts into a coherent whole.
That is how effective resilience becomes real and sustainable.
More about Chris Steele
Chris Steele is the Director of Asset Management services at Binnies and brings 20 years of qualified asset management experience across regulated and nonregulated water, energy and waste sectors with leading involvement within digital industry forums and working groups.
Key to his current tenure starting 2015 has been the focus on expediting the use of digital solutions and technologies to enhance the physical asset lifecycle aligned to European Sustainable Development Goals. This experience combined with his passion for nurturing new ideas, has brought him to lead a diverse team of asset management professionals to meet the evolving challenges of asset intensive organisations.