Water services
To meet the challenge of providing drinking water to over 3.5 million people living in the driest region of the UK, our Water Services team operates 162 treatment works and looks after 288 treated water storage reservoirs, 22 raw water reservoirs, 36,000 kilometres of water mains, and 183 water towers. Water Services is divided into five specialist areas:
- the supply team, which abstracts, treats and distributes water to strategic distribution centres
- the networks team, which distributes water to customers and manages day-to-day dealings with street works contractors
- the quality team, which provides specialist scientific knowledge and water quality management
- the operational management centre, a 24-hour support centre that provides scheduling coordination and incident management for field teams
- the contract management team, which manages contracts with network partners, company car providers, plant and transport teams and specialist engineering teams
Wastewater services
Wastewater Services oversees and maintains 1,078 treatment works, more than 3,500 pumping stations, and enough sewers to pump waste from London to Sydney and back. Wastewater Services is divided into five main areas:
- collection, which deals with every aspect of the sewerage network.
- treatment ensuring sewage is treated correctly and safely.
- regional tankering, which looks after every aspect of the bio-solids business, from the collection and transporting of bio-solids to the selling of products derived from them.
- quality and process science, which provides 24-hour support to the business unit.
- the operational management centre, a 24-hour support centre that provides scheduling coordination and incident management for field teams.
Customer services
Customer Services is the voice of Anglian Water for our 5.6 million customers, dealing with almost 7,000 enquiries a day. The department is made up of four teams.
- the customer contact centre, which handles all communication with customers
- income and billing services, which is responsible for all aspects of bill generation and income collection
- business customer services, which specialises in meeting the needs of our business customers
- developer services, which is dedicated to providing one-stop assistance to developers, regional planning authorities, and any other parties involved in developments within our region. It is divided into nine teams, covering marketing and planning, income, process and performance, wastewater, water mains, water connections and metering.
Asset management
Asset Management’s main responsibility is to maintain and improve Anglian Water’s asset base, primarily treatment works. It schedules the design and construction of new assets, while managing budget spend. The department incorporates several areas:
- the Alliance, the business model for Anglian Water and its engineering partners to work collectively to design and construct assets
- the Strategic Asset Management team, which manages the spend on assets and sets spending targets for capital schemes
- asset planning, which prioritises what needs to be done, develops standards and policies, and assesses performance and risk
- the Investment Programme Planning and Management team, which plans and monitors one and two year rolling programmes as well as a five-year capital investment programme
- the Innovation team, which undertakes research and development to determine investment in long-term initiatives
- supply chain management, a commercial and project management team which works across asset management
- water resources, which manages the supply of both ground water and surface water
- asset data management centre/Geodesys, which uses in-house geographical information systems to provide data on assets
- risk and value management, which works across asset management to support effective risk management
Legal
The legal team plays a key role in enabling Anglian Water to meet its strategic objectives by:
- protecting the company’s assets and reputation
- minimising legal risk in and optimising any transactions the company undertakes
- ensuring that anyone our company deals with complies with their obligations to us
- assisting our company in complying with its legal obligation in any statute, regulations or other law, including our licence in any contract our company has entered into, including our obligations to our lenders
- ensuring adequate systems are in place to govern the company effectively and appropriately.
Human resources
Human Resources is made up of five departments:
- payroll, which is responsible for paying not just the 3,400 people who work for Anglian Water Services, but another 2,700 people who work across the AWG Group
- administration, which provides a helpline service to all Anglian Water employees offering advice on subjects ranging from recruitment and expenses to disciplinary and grievance issues. This department also produces all employment contract paperwork and maintains personnel files
- the People and Performance team, which is responsible for training and development.
- the Health and Safety team includes occupational health advisers who help employees deal with any sickness and injury problems as well as running health-promoting courses such as lifting skills. It also includes safety advisers, who work with frontline managers on assessing health and safety risks and advise on incorporating safety features into the design of all our buildings and equipment
- the Change team, which consists of project managers, business analysts and internal consultants, brings project management expertise to the strategic projects to ensure that they are delivered on time and realise their objectives
Communications and corporate responsibility
The communications team is responsible for all corporate communications, both internal and external. Its functions include:
- serving as a press office, making journalists aware of the news potential of stories relating to Anglian Water
communicating key messages to politicians, Ofwat and other stakeholders
- keeping employees abreast of developments
- ensuring customers receive consistent information that meets corporate guidelines
- sounding out employees and customers through research to identify where improvements can be made
Regulation
The focus of the Regulation department is both external, seeking to ensure that regulatory frameworks are beneficial to Anglian Water, and internal, working across the company to obtain maximum compliance with regulations. It is made up of three sections:
water quality and environmental performance:
- manages the relationship with the Drinking Water Inspectorate, Environment Agency, English Nature and other key environmental regulators to influence the environmental regulatory framework as it applies to drinking water
- provides a drinking water and environmental regulatory service to the business by, for example, delivering regulatory authorisations
- supports the business planning process and provides expertise in fields including drinking water quality, wastewater performance, laboratory services, and water resource planning
economic regulation:
- manages the relationship with Ofwat to develop a sympathetic framework of economic regulation
- ensures the company complies with the legal and licence obligations mandated by its regulatory contract
- provides feedback on how the regulator perceives the company’s performance with a view to deliver improvements
- helps obtain the most cost-effective regulatory contract
business strategy:
- provides long-term business planning
- co-ordinates the annual business planning process
Finance
The Finance Department is made up of five teams: Finance, Income and Tariffs, Capital Accounting, Treasury and Business Performance. Its primary goals are:
- ensuring that customer tariffs balance the need to maximise income with affordability
- minimising the cost of current business financing, new debt, and refinanced debt maturities
- managing cash flows and compliance with both cash-based and non-financial covenants
- planning and managing performance by creating benchmarks that go beyond strictly financial criteria
managing costs
- implementing strong financial controls to ensure full accountability and reduce the potential for fraud
Information Services
Information Services work alongside the other business units to provide the vital systems and security required from IT-based services. It covers the full range of business-enabling services, from desktop PCs to telephony, via applications development, applications support and data exploitation.
As part of this, the IS teams support one of Europe's largest applications of telemetry and process control technology. These systems are the "eyes and ears" of our business.
To help deliver an effective and innovative service, focused on adding business value, Information Services work in partnership with a range of providers of outsourced services, including CSC, Solution1 and O2.