Sludge Strategy Decision Support with South West Water

After a period of consultation, the UK industry regulator (Ofwat) announced plans to introduce competition in the sludge market from 2020 onwards. All companies providing these services needed to establish approaches to optimise the planning and delivery of processes and investments to ready themselves for this market opportunity. South West Water also wished to consider this in the context of a longer-term investment strategy. A Decision Support Tool (DST) was required to consider financial, operational performance and asset resilience impacts resulting from a variety of strategic investment decisions. The key outcome was to recommend the approach that could deliver the highest Net Present Value over a 25-year period.