After months of extensive stakeholder engagement, the water sector’s innovation centre of excellence – known as Spring - is moving to its next stage of development with the launch today of its new website.

The idea sprang from the water sector’s innovation strategy – Water Innovation 2050, published in 2020.

Since then, it successfully bid for £250,000 from Ofwat’s first Innovation in Water Competition in May which was matched by water companies through UKWIR.

Since July, the team behind Spring have worked with water companies, academia and the supply chain to understand what the first version of Spring should look like. The website shares initial details of how it will accelerate water sector transformation through innovation and collaboration.

When it launches in December, Spring will provide a range of functions and services for innovators, through two parallel routes.

The first, the Ideation and Collaboration incubator, will bolster and streamline how ideas are formed and how different stakeholders will be brought together. The second, the Innovation Adoption route, is focussed on how “the best can help the rest”. Simply, it is designed to help get innovations into the hands of those who can use them.

Fundamental to both is Spring’s emphasis on addressing the skills gap the sector faces, while creating innovation champions and supporting the sector’s open data ambitions.

The first version of Spring which will be available to use in December will be a minimum viable product - not the final finished product.

The Spring team is now looking for stakeholders to engage with it to help shape its evolution throughout 2022. Through the rest of 2021, Spring will continue to develop and engage with its users to ensure it meets the sector’s needs and can support the game-changing innovation needed.

The next step in Spring’s creation will be establishing it as a subsidiary of UKWIR. This will allow it to maintain an independent brand and develop its own sustainable funding programme, while sharing resources and maintaining strong strategic links with UKWIR, the industry’s research organisation.

Steve Kaye, UKWIR CEO, said:

“I’m really excited we’re able to share this first look at Spring and I’m equally grateful for the team for their hard work in getting it this far. By creating Spring as a subsidiary of UKWIR, it can operate independently and create its own new opportunities while tapping into the networks, experience, and expertise UKWIR has and can also build on Big Questions programme to address the key challenges facing the industry, now and in the future”.

Shaunna Berendsen, Client Programme Director for Spring, added that the team was confident the full launch in December would start to really accelerate the innovation transformation the sector needs.

John Russell, Senior Director of Strategy and Planning at Ofwat, commented:

“We're very pleased to see that the water sector’s innovation centre of excellence – Spring - is moving to its next stage. Alongside Ofwat's innovation fund, Spring will have a key role to play transforming the sector for the benefit of customers, the environment and wider society. I'm looking forward to seeing some of the game-changing innovations Spring can encourage and the sector needs"

Click here to visit the Spring website