Southern Water is major utility company delivering drinking water and wastewater services to nearly 1 million customers in the South East.

The company headquarters are in Worthing, West Sussex, with various regional offices and service centres across Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, as well as its large operational portfolio of over 500 sites.

Bruton Knowles was appointed by Southern Water in 2011 to deliver a wide ranging Strategic Asset review, focussing on maximising the opportunities that were available to the business through its own property assets, in order to deliver improved customer services, and secure savings throughout the overall administration area.

Whilst some utility businesses have been committed to a policy of overall disposal to raise funds, others have adopted a more holistic approach of progressive rationalisation based on strategic estate management.

Our approach to consultancy in this sector has been innovative from the outset. We were the first consultancy to articulate the strategic options available and in particular to explain, advocate and implement policies of progressive rationalisation.

Whilst this approach is now commonplace for both public and private sector asset bases, we were the first to promote this approach with our work for the Crown Estate in the mid to late 1980’s. This work was key to the core aims of Southern Water and to help feed into medium and long range planning and OFWAT pricing negotiations.

The aims of the review included a rationalisation of the pooled estate and providing advice on maximising the potential from the retained estate and ensuring this.

Bruton Knowles teamed up with Peoplespace, a specialist consultant that provides advice on working culture, technologies and offices using increasingly innovative solutions, in response to economic, environmental and social pressures.
 
BK and Peoplespace had both already acted separately for several organisations across a number of sectors, who all pursue a variety of different policies in respect of their asset base including Thames Valley Police, West Dorset District Council, Hewlett Packard, Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, and Isle of Wight Partnership.

A project team was established and following detailed inspections and research we facilitated a number of steering groups with senior managers and directors to understand the property requirements of all aspects of the business. In response to the strategic challenge of retention or disposal of estates we developed a methodology for assessing the long term worth of various strategic options; reflecting capital and revenue receipts over fixed periods together with residual values. The final reporting addressed occupation of accommodation; regeneration, redevelopment and disposal; control of capital and revenue costs, taking into account life cycles and sustainability.

We also developed approaches to reflect the non-financial benefits to Southern Water delivered from their portfolios in areas including conservation, better working practices and the environment.

Southern Water will utilise the findings in a way where the key knowledge of the people, property and technology are synchronised. As a result of this approach the initiative presented more opportunities for achieving efficiency gains, encouraging productive collaboration, improving services and promoting sustainable growth.

For help and advice contact Steven Drennan on 01483 238380 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.