BQ08 - Future Scenario Planning

Specific Questions To Answer

What futures do we need to plan for?  What are their potential consequences?

Through the development of the Big Question it was identified there was a significant gap or no knowledge of scenario planning and how they can be used to inform decisions.

The question we are seeking to answer in this specific project is:

1.2 We understand the range of alternative worlds and scenarios that our plans need to be tested against.

This enables to quantity and explain our situation and long-term decision making to customers and regulators. Water and Sewerage companies and regulators have difficulty in predicting the future environment for which we maintain and improve our assets. There is a range of research, forecasts and tools available such as UKCIP, UN COP, and Flood Plans, but we currently rely on ad-hoc interpretation to form a detailed picture of the risks to water industry and the likely effect on assets.

There are also difficulties in consolidating and comparing these forecasts for overlap and understanding the upper and lower bounds of uncertainty, so that future scenarios can be predicted with confidence and totex can be directed in a truly sustainable way. "

Project Aims to Achieve

We need an approach and framework which enables a consolidated view of the future for the water industry in the medium (2030) and long term (2050) to be quantified by individual companies. This should include a full analysis of the macro-environment (e.g. PESTLE) to understand the range of external influences on the future and therefore risks to the industry. This would be expected to include influences such as climate change, drought, flooding, the outlook for water quality, biodiversity, ecology, consumption, consumer appliances, economy, population, industry, Brexit and trade.

Shell have been undertaking scenario analysis for 50 years and this could be an excellent model to follow. The water sector has a precious resource to manage, the nearest application we currently have is the Water Resource Management Plan (WRMP) which has a narrow focus the sector has adopted DWMP inputs will inform the process. This project will determine the wider group of scenarios water and wastewater companies should be considering.

Scenario planning influences resilience planning and the outputs will inform the company activities in the context of the 4R’s (resistance, redundancy, reliability, response recovery). This approach will enable companies to make ‘no regret’ decisions in their plans tested against the universal framework.

Contractor Tasks

The research organisation shall:

-Undertake and document the literature search to identify best practice approaches and published data

-Produce project resume

-Run sector wide facilitated workshops minimum of 4 (to include steering group review)

-Interview wider stakeholders – minimum of 5

-Identify the future scenario themes

-Identify the measures to be used

-Identify the time horizons

-Identify the boundaries of the measures

-Ensure the scenarios can be applied to all companies (Large Small. Water and Wastewater)

-Identify how combinations of elements can be applied

-Test the scenarios and the outputs and refine

-Produce final report

-Share knowledge during and at the end of the project

The primary researcher shall include for academic input to ensure that current and emergent thinking brought into consideration throughout the project. A wide variety of sources and inputs shall be used to inform the approach. The researcher shall ensure there is wide participation. The timescale for the project shall be 6 months from award to delivery of the final report.