THAMES WATER

TRANSFORMING POLLUTION RESPONSE SERVICES

ABOUT

Brand: Thames Water

Project: Transforming Pollution Response Services

Year: 2023

Role: Lead Experience Designer

WHO IS THAMES WATER?

Thames Water is a company that supplies water to homes and businesses in London and the surrounding areas, and also takes away wastewater. It is the largest water and wastewater company in the UK.

OVERVIEW

I worked as Lead Experience Designer on a service design project to help transform Thames Water's pollution response service, addressing a £17M operational challenge. Our goal was to uncover the human context behind systemic inefficiencies and design solutions that would improve response times, reduce costs, and better support field engineers.

THE CHALLENGE

Thames Water needed to fundamentally reimagine their pollution response process. Initial data showed that only 2% of 9,858 pollution events raised were confirmed pollutions, resulting in thousands of unnecessary dispatches and significant operational costs.

MY ROLE

As part of a dedicated service design team, we:

• Conducted 29 hours of ride-alongs with field engineers
• Observed 18 jobs across 3 locations
• Analyzed 250+ job notes
• Performed 7 hours each of desk and call center observation
• Shadowed 7 engineers in their daily operations

ABOVE: Images taken from 29 hours of field engineer ride-alongs

KEY INSIGHTS

Through extensive research, we uncovered three critical areas for improvement:

1. Triage Efficiency

• Only 2% of reported pollution events were confirmed pollutions
• Over 9,300 unnecessary truck rolls annually
• Webform challenges leading to missed SLA targets

2. Field Operations

• Only 5.5% of engineer time spent fixing issues
• 63% of time spent on administrative tasks and travel
• Poor information increased average job time by 86%

3. System Complexity

• Staff required to use 14 different systems
• Critical location data not reaching field devices
• Fragmented communication channels

THE SOLUTION

Based on the insights gathered, we developed 11 strategic initiatives across three focus areas:

1. Improving triage to create capacity
2. Enhancing information flow to field crews
3. Increasing active time of reactive crews

ABOVE: Pollutions reporting and response service map and strategic initiatives