Costain has developed new skills and brought in key new people to meet the changing needs of its water sector customers.

Tim Cooper, Business Development Director, Water, explained that the aim is to help customers operate more efficiently in a changing industry.

“Changes to the regulatory environment and demands to reduce carbon and costs mean that water companies must connect their capital programmes and operations in new ways. They have to develop end-to-end business processes to ensure the right investment decisions are made and that assets operate to their full potential.”

“For our customers this means new organisational structures, new ways of working and a need to look beyond the water sector for best practice. This creates new opportunities for competitive advantage but also increased complexity.”

Costain is aiming to support water customers in two ways – by helping them to deliver new assets more effectively and to optimize the performance of both new and existing assets.

Tim Cooper said that Costain had embraced lessons from the automotive and other sectors, in particular the need for standardisation, effective assembly and smooth transition into operations -   a’factory thinking’ approach.

To support the new approach  Costain has recruited Steve Fozard, previously Supply Chain Development Manager at Balfour Beatty Utility Solutions.  Tim Cooper said Fozard has been at the forefront of industry thinking in this area, in particular off-site manufacture and development of the supply chain.

Costain has also brought in John Kingdon, previously  Divisional Director at Jacobs Engineering, as Framework Director at Costain.

Tim Cooper added:

 “We are exploring new ways of using data and risk-based decision-making to optimise our customers’ operations. This is a new area of focus for the business and so we have brought in from Jacobs to build our capability in operational support. John has more than twenty years’ water operations experience including periods with both Thames Water and Veolia Water, and will provide support to our existing framework teams.”