Richard is a Senior Executive, Chartered Civil Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and Institute of Water. He has over 30 years of experience of Engineering, Construction and Operations across both Water and Wastewater treatment and infrastructure. In addition, he was National Chairman of the Pipeline Industries Guild and a Chief Flying Instructor in the Royal Air Force Reserve, flying over 4500 sorties on conventional and powered gliders.

Peter has been Chief Executive of Anglian Water Group since October 2013; his previous roles include Managing Director of Anglian Water from January 2010 and Chief Operating Officer from 2004. After completing an MSc in Analytical Chemistry at the University of East Anglia, Peter joined Anglian Water as one of its first graduate management trainees. Since then he has remained with the company, with spells working in America, Europe and Asia.

As a founding member, and now co-chair, of the UK Corporate Leaders Group, he has championed business action on climate change over many years. He is also an active supporter of Business in the Community (BiTC), which focuses on the positive difference business can make to communities. He currently Chairs BiTC’s East of England Leadership Team and is a Trustee of the international water charity WaterAid. He is a Past President of the Institute of Water and a former Chair of Water UK.

Peter holds an MBA from Warwick Business School and is a Chartered Water and Environmental Manager, a Chartered Scientist and a Chartered Environmentalist.  He is an Honorary Fellow of the Society of the Environment and an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management.  He is also very proud to have been awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science by UEA.

Hannah has over 25 years experience in the Water Industry, and has spent most of her career working within Water Network Operations, specialising in Leakage Management. Hannah has recently joined Thames Water as Head of Leakage where she is responsible for delivering leakage performance. Prior to joining Thames Hannah held a variety of roles at United Utilities. Over her career Hannah has delivered transformational programmes and innovative projects.

Samuel is the Head of Integrated Network Strategy, leading strategic and technical teams in both water and wastewater networks at United Utilities. His role brings together experience in wastewater networks as an operational area manager with past academic studies and subsequent doctorate in leakage management from the University of Sheffield. Since 2021 Samuel has led UKWIR’s Big Question programme on how to achieve zero water supply interruptions by 2050, focussing on the evolution of the route map to realise this ambition.

Mr Ridzuan Ismail was the Director of Water Supply Network Department in PUB, Singapore’s National Water Agency, responsible for the planning, operations and maintenance of the water supply network in Singapore, so as to ensure efficient and continuous supply of good water to all its customers. Prior to this appointment, Ridzuan was involved in catchment and reservoir management as well as the development of the drainage and used water infrastructure. Since 1 July 2023, he has taken on the role as the Chief Sustainability Officer and Director of the Policy & Planning Department, tasked to oversee PUB’s sustainability efforts and strategic policy and planning work.

Axel joined Thames Water in 2021 as Water Balance Process Owner and Programme Manager, with the objective of improving the accuracy, credibility and reliability of leakage reporting. He now leads the assurance and continuous improvement function alongside the in-year leakage reporting and insight team.

He drives the end to end digitalisation and streamlining of the water balance and leakage reporting processes, with a mission to provide accurate and consistent reporting and the best possible actionable insight to management and teams across the business to enhance leakage performance. 

Axel holds an MEng from Cambridge University, and started his career as a consultant at Newton Europe, where he developed his expertise in operational performance improvement and change delivery. He began his work in the water industry in 2016 when he joined PA Consulting, designing and delivering transformation programmes across retail, network operations, digital, regulation and asset management.

Kieran is the Water Director at Northumbrian Water Group (NWG), with responsibility for a team of over 800 people ensuring every day we supply 1,104 megalitres (1.1 billion litres) of water to our 4 million customers across Essex, Suffolk and the north-east of England.

He joined NWG from Thames Water, where he was the Water Director for Thames Valley and Home Counties areas, having spent 20 years in the telecommunications industry prior, where he played a key leadership role in connecting and maintaining the UK’s largest broadband network.

Paul has close to 30years’ experience working with NGOs, Not for Profits, Charities and trade organisations, across the water and environment sector. Across that time, he has undertaken an array of work that has involved TV, radio and policy. In addition to being CEO with Future Water, Paul is also an NED with REAF, a sustainable fisheries organisation, established as a Community Interest Company, focused in Norfolk & Suffolk.

Previously Director of Membership & Development at CIWEM (Chartered Institution of Water & Environmental Management); Pauls other roles have included steering group member for the Government Chief Scientist funded Global Water Security report; Council member, Society for the Environment; Member of Engineering Council International Advisory Panel; Member, UK Water Sector Advisory Group; Management Committee and Council member, European Water Association (EWA); Council member, European Network of Environmental Professionals (ENEP) and EWA representative on Climate & Water Strategic Steering Group for the Water Framework Directive; plus CIWEM representative to the UNFCCC meetings.

Lifelong influences are Petra Kelly and Jacques Cousteau, along with Star Trek.

I have been in the water industry for South Staffs Water for 31½ years, having started in Network Modelling prior to working in our Control Room and then moving to operations prior to becoming the Network Performance Manager for over 20 years. As Network Performance Manager I have managed:- Risk Management (reviewing all mains and pump isolations, new development impacts), Interruptions to Supply and Low pressure, Network Modelling, Standpipe Hire, Water Regulations, Leakage Operations and Pressure Management. For the last two years I have been leading a Smart Network Delivery Project which has including delivery of increased sensor penetration, visualisation of all data, Near Real Time Network Modelling, Digital Twin and correlating leakage sensor data with
pressure sensors. I am currently working with the customer metering department on potential smart meter trials

Clive is Innovation Partnerships Manager for Northumbrian Water Group (NWG). Having spent 25 years in Information Technology and Information Systems, Clive has been delivering and deploying operational solutions within Northumbrian Water for last 14 years, most notably in the geospatial field. Clive has been a driving force in progressing a national underground asset register, established England’s first moss tree, and has pioneered a number of initiatives to improve positional accuracy of buried assets. Partnership and collaboration have been at the heart of his work. Now Clive helps
colleagues win external funding to turn their ideas into reality, something that led to the inception of the National Leakage Research and Test Centre.

Andrew has over 10 years’ experience in leakage management at Northumbrian Water, initially working on annual leakage performance reporting before more recently moving into a strategic planning role.

He is also the current water lead on the Innovation Ambassadors Group which aims to bring the latest technology and thinking from around the industry into NWL.

Marc manages Ofwat's flagship £200m innovation fund, overseeing the delivery of the Water Breakthrough Challenge and Water Discovery Challenge competitions alongside the strategic direction of the fund. He has led on the Ofwat innovation fund since its inception in 2019. Marc has worked in regulation for over 10 years, first with the Gambling Commission and more latterly with Ofwat since 2014.

Cristian Jimenez Paredes is Operations Manager at Aguas Antofagasta, Chile. He is a Civil Engineer, graduating from Universidad Católica del Norte, Chile. He has a Certificate in Operations Management from Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, and he has an MBA.

Cristian’s main responsibilities are operational efficiency programs and O&M of desalination plants. He has been working at the water utility since 2004, in successive roles - Process Engineer, Network Manager, Operations Development Manager, and, currently, as Operations Manager.

His main projects have been developing water loss reduction processes and projects, desalination plants production efficiency, quality service programs, network visibility (sensors all over the network), and smart water network process deployment (TaKaDu, i2o)

Ian is a civil engineer with almost 30 years experience in a variety of roles within the water industry both in Scotland and New Zealand, including the delivery of the multi award winning, UK first, heat from wastewater installation in 2015.

In his current role as Strategic Water Infrastructure Team Leader, Ian is responsible for developing and implementing strategic plans for Scottish Water's strategic infrastructure, with a focus on ensuring the reliability and resilience of the company's network. He is also involved in the development and implementation of new technologies and approaches to water management and asset condition assessment, helping Scottish Water to stay at the forefront of the industry.

Richard has worked for Severn Trent Water for 17 years. Starting as an apprentice, working in R&M, Richard has progressed through several roles including Senior Technician, R&M Manager, Project Delivery Lead and currently holds the role of Subject Matter Expert with the Green Recovery Department. In this role, Richard leads on Innovation concentrating on the STW Lead Replacement Supply Pipes Programme, and also runs the New Products Group CoP, which looks at a range of products and ideas for the Infra and Non-Infra world within STW. STW endeavours to resolve issues by working with their Framework suppliers to design and develop innovative ideas.

Annie has worked at Severn Trent Water (STW) for the last five years - four of those years have been spent working in leakage.

Annie is one of 10 female Water Network Technicians in STW. This is a field based role looking after 17 DMAs in a rural area of Shropshire with the primary objective of reducing leakage in a geographical area. The DMAs that Annie looks after are largely impacted by high pressure variants and high agricultural demand.

More recently, Annie has been supporting the Leakage Operations Review project, an internal review of STW Leakage Operating Model, to understand what is working well and what can be improved. She has interviewed and shadowed Leakage Technicians used other tools and techniques (such as DILOs, Focus Interviews, SWOT analysis, analysis of leakage data) to understand the county’s performance, highlight possible improvements, identify best practice, develop continuous improvement techniques, and widen her leakage network. Annie has combined this work with her day job of reducing leakage.

Carlos is a civil engineer specialising in finance and project evaluation, with over 30 years of experience working in the water and sanitation sector, including 25 years on water loss control. He has led projects on leak detection, fraud control and metering management, as well as the incorporation of best practices and new technologies. Mr. Palacio is currently directing different programs within the unaccounted-for water management strategy of Empresas Públicas de Medellín, a leading company in the water sector in Colombia and Latin America.

Civil Engineer specialised in Hydraulics in University of Porto – Faculty of Engineering, with 10 years of experience in Water Supply Systems Management, Water Loss, Non-Revenue Water, Water Safety & Security and Integrated Water Cycle Management.

He is currently the Water Supply Manager of Águas e Energia do Porto, since the end of 2018, being responsible for several strategic projects of the utility, making it one of the best and most recognized utilities at national and international level in the water sector. He was until then responsible for the Water Meters Unit of the same utility.

He holds a postgraduate degree in General Business Management from Católica Porto Business School, and he’s regularly responsible for academic internships & master thesis orientation.

Since 2016 he is the vice-coordinator of the Water Distribution Systems Committee, of Portuguese Water Systems Association, and member of the Specialist Group on Water Loss of the IWA (International Water Association).

I have been in the Water Industry for 8 years. Starting my career in Thames Water’s Network Optimisation Team, moving into Leakage 4 years ago, becoming Leakage Optimisation Manager for North London. I joined South Staffs Water 18 months ago as Head Of Leakage, responsible for all things Leakage Operations, analysis, targeting and reporting.

Michelle is a chartered civil engineer and a highly driven and experienced management professional, with over 30 years in the water industry. Her key areas of expertise include strategic business planning and asset planning, performance monitoring, collaboration and stakeholder engagement.
Michelle joined WICS in 2017 as Chief Operating Officer. She brings experience of working within regulated companies to the practice of the economic regulator. By drawing on her communication skills and expertise in collaborative working, Michelle works with the water sector stakeholders in Scotland to promote Ethical Business Practice and Regulation and has developed a trust and confidence behavioural model for the sector to operate within in the current regulatory period.
Before joining WICS, Michelle was Head of Network Asset Planning at Bristol Water, where she was responsible for managing the company’s network assets. Prior to this she was seconded from PA Consulting into Ofwat as the Programme Director for the Retail Market Opening Programme. Michelle had previously worked for Black & Veatch, where she led on several strategic business and asset planning assignments. 

David Lonergan is a Chartered Engineer with 25 years’ experience in the water sector. His current role is National Leakage Manager at Uisce Eireann where he has led the Leakage Management team since 2018. This team is responsible for achieving Irish Waters leakage reduction targets via Capital & Operational activities. This team manages all key leakage reduction activities across Ireland such as find & fix, pressure reduction & metering activities. The team is also responsible for planning of the Water Network below ground portfolio including distribution & trunk main replacement. The team manages the use of innovation to continuously drive effectiveness & efficiencies across all leakage programs.

Key projects delivered by David during his time in this team was the delivery of a National Leakage Management System for the Utility in 2019 & achievement of Irish Waters first major leakage reduction milestone of 166 MLD of water saved in 2021.

David previously worked on the Irish Water Program in 2013 which was responsible for setting up the Irish Water Utility, then joining the utility in 2014 as a Data Governance Specialist and later Water Network Asset Planning Specialist. Previous to this David spent 15 years in Dublin City Council & was a member of the Dublin Region Water Conservation Project & following that the Dublin Region Watermain Rehabilitation Project.

James manages Leakage Operations across Anglian Water and Hartlepool Water. He heads up a team of 300 people assigned to different workstreams across three regional areas, delivering Active Leakage Control, Advanced Detection, SMART leakage monitoring, Customer Side Leakage and new technology development and implementation. A senior leader within the award-winning Integrated Maintenance and Repair alliance, James influences both strategic and tactical direction in Anglian Waters challenging leakage reduction journey. Having started in the water industry in 1991, James’ career has taken him through regulation, scientific, innovation and front-line network management developing a broad range of expertise and knowledge. As a LEAN 6 Sigma practitioner, James specialises in operational performance and efficiency, optimised process development, technology adoption, and business-as-usual integration.

Pierre is a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (Paris), and holds several Master of Science and Engineering degrees. He joined SUEZ Group in 2005 and has since acquired 15 years of operational and strategic experience in the water sector, his career path ever in sync with innovation.

After starting a career as an operational manager, Pierre joined SUEZ HQ as a project manager within the General Division in charge of research, innovation, institutional relations and coordination of SUEZ Business Units, before supervising from 2013 to 2017 the international technical support and the monitoring of the performance of the Group's water subsidiaries, as a Technical Performance Manager.

Eager to give a digital turn to his career, Pierre joined SUEZ’s SMART SOLUTIONS subsidiary at the end of 2017 as a project manager overseeing the implementation of a new geographic information system (GIS) for SUEZ Water France, with more than 3000 users.

Since mid-2019, Pierre is the "Chief Solutions Officer" of SUEZ’s Distribution Technical Centre, the excellency centre of SUEZ for water networks expertise. As such, he is currently undertaking the transformation of ideas, innovations and technological partnerships into concrete solutions, contributing to the business and technical performance and differentiation of the Group's entities, and translating expertise and innovation in the management of drinking water networks into reality.

Areas of Expertise

• Advanced technological delivery solutions for network, pressure and asset management (namely Calm Network^TM and Netscan^TM)
• Cost-effective and efficient management and maintenance of assets
• Digital solutions and Smart Water technologies

David brings more than 25 years international experience in Business development, marketing and product development across ICT, Utility and manufacturing industries. David is passionate about working with customers to support their digital transformation journey to leverage IOT and data analytics across the global water industry. David holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Electronics),  has completed a graduate diploma in Business and is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Daniel Harrington is a Senior Project Engineer with Torres Strait Island Regional Council (TSIRC), Queensland Australia. He has worked with TSIRC for over 6 years in areas of operational management and project management, specifically with water and wastewater infrastructure. He has a keen interest in identifying and implementing operational efficiencies, and in designing infrastructure which is fit for in this remote and logistically challenging region.

Andy is the Head of Smart Water within the Water Business Stream at Anglian Water, which provides water and water recycling services to almost 7 million customers in the East of England. Over the past 35 years, he has worked both within the UK and on several overseas projects specialising in Non-Revenue Water (NRW) and network management.

Andy leads with a focus on people and has a passion for cross-sector collaboration and innovation. His current role combines his core strengths of disruptive thinking and tenacity to drive digital transformation within the water sector, with the aim of creating the water utility of the future.

In addition, Andy is the Distribution lead on the “Beacon Project”, a unique collaboration between Anglian Water and its Alliance partners, WaterAid and the Nepal Water Supply Corporation (NWSC) with the aim of supporting and enhancing clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene in the WASH sector and in Lahan, a fast-growing town in southeast Nepal.

With over 25 years’ experience in the Water Industry, and a background in both mechanical engineering and database applications, Jeremy is responsible for the management of innovation within SES Water. He has a keen interest in innovations that will transform how we manage our water networks, in particular smart metering, smart networks, artificial intelligence and IoT communications. In addition to his role at SES Water, Jeremy is also the lead for the UKWIR national zero leakage project and is responsible for coordinating and driving the UK leakage research programme.

David has a background in telecoms/instrumentation and has worked for Anglian Water for more than 20 years in a variety of roles in the leakage team, most recently as Leakage Strategy Manager. He has responsibility for all aspects of leakage reporting and the water balance.  In collaboration with the water resources team, he defines the leakage strategy and investments required to ensure that the companies supply/demand balance is maintained into the future as part of the water resources management plan and business plan submissions

Mikal Willmott is a Chartered Water and Environmental Manager, who has worked more than 20 years at Severn Trent Water having joined their graduate program straight from university. Mikal has specialised in water loss management, understanding water demand and flow monitoring. Mikal currently sits on the Flow Measurement Special Interest Group Leadership Group and was formerly on the British Standards Committee for metering in closed pipes. Mikal has spoken at various national and international conferences, including the previous Global Leakage Summits.

For the last 7 years Ian has been Principal within the Water Engineering Science and Technology profession within Ofwat.   He has a wide role providing technical input to Ofwat's monitoring of company performance, Environment team, Enforcement and Casework, Outcomes – including performance commitments, and price review.

Prior to joining Ofwat Ian has held positions in a number of engineering consultancies, including (what is now) WSP, Utilitec, Atkins and Amey.

He started his journey into leakage in 1994,   In his recent experience he has been part of the team tightening the technical specification for leakage performance commitments in the UK.

He has keen interest in the definition of leakage/unaccounted for water and non revenue water and in being able to draw meaningful international comparisons.

He is a graduate of Lancaster University and has been a chartered engineer since 1994.

Tanya has 17 years’ experience in the water industry working as a Network Modeller, Leakage. Manager and Project Management in Asset Strategy and Smart Solutions at SES Water. In her current role as Smart Water Strategy Manager, Tanya has a focus on helping to deliver a leakage reduction through a number of strategic projects, including iDMA; SES Water’s intelligent network.

David is a Chartered Engineer and has over 25 years of international experience in the Water Industry - specialising in operation, planning, design and construction of water and wastewater assets. He is presently the Manger of the Network Improvement Programme with Watercare in Auckland and is responsible for a team managing the leakage detection programme, pressure management, inflow and infiltration and Smart Networks programs. David recently returned to managing leakage with Watercare after nearly 20 years of managing design and construction. David has 11 years of experience in New Zealand primarily with Watercare and the majority of which was managing the construction of the $400m Hunua 4 Pipeline, 31km of 2m and 1.6m from suburbs to the City Centre. Prior to that David was with Aecom in Auckland, Toronto, Dublin and London. In Dublin and London was managing the design of the leakage driven pipe replacement in the city centres of both Cities. David began his career as a Graduate Trainee in Leakage Control at Three Valleys Water (Now Affinity) before leading the North London leakage detection teams, improving the district metering and reporting systems and optimising the large-scale pressure management schemes in North London

Martin Duff is Atmos International’s Business Development Director, responsible for the water sector. Since graduating in BSc Geography & Environmental Management in 2007, Martin has spent most of his career in the water industry both in the UK and internationally, taking a number of different technologies to market.

Martin has focused on a variety of applications including surface water management, industrial and municipal water treatment, pump efficiency and leak detection, using his business development experience to create resilient supply chains that allow the water sector to tackle major challenges such as regulatory compliance, climate change, Net Zero and the energy crisis.

Mike serves as Electro Scan’s Executive Vice President, Global Operations. Mike started with Electro Scan in 2018 and has already overseen 500,000 LF of Focused Electrode Leak Location (FELL) inspection. Mike also manages the Product Development for Electro Scan including the new pressurized tools DELTA, TRIDENT and SWORDFISH. Mike and his family live in Syracuse, New York.

A former concert pianist who majored in music analysis at Cambridge University, Victoria Edwards is founder and CEO of FIDO, a pioneering tech company using acoustics and AI to revolutionise leak detection in the water sector.

She is currently Council member of the Climate Committee at Tech UK and chair of the advisory group on clean tech adoption. In addition Victoria is the co-chair of the FCDO UK Government and Indian Government water digital working group with KPMG helping to deliver digital strategy in the water sector.

Victoria recently said, “New disruptive technologies like FIDO AI and the creation of unconventional partnerships are the only ways to drive down leakage and non-revenue water and to challenge the climate change disaster that is pushing our communities towards Day Zero; the day communities run out of water.”

David is currently the International Sales Director for Mueller technologies and has been in the water industry for 25 years. He spent the first 15 years as a water management consultant in the UK, specialising in non-revenue water; advising utilities on leakage strategy, reporting and targeting and even getting his hands dirty installing data loggers and looking for leaks. David moved into a sales role 10 years ago and has travelled the world helping clients build their smart water networks.

Warren Beere is a Condition Assessment Engineer who looks after Xylem’s portfolio of pipeline assessment services within the UK and Ireland – namely SmartBall, PipeDiver and SoundPrint Acoustic Fibre Optic System. Warren’s focus is to support utilities in collecting high quality inspection data about their pipelines and interpreting those results using sound engineering principles to increase pipeline reliability, prolong asset life and make smarter, evidence-based spending decisions.

Mark has over 20 years technical sales experience within the water industry covering instrumentation, automation and control systems and more recently solutions for pressure control and network monitoring.

At Syrinix, (now a Badger Meter brand following acquisition in January 2023), Mark is responsible for business development for EMEA & ASIA helping customers deliver network optimised and resilient water services with monitoring of their pipelines. Their solutions enable utilities to gain actionable network insight of their pipelines, detecting pressure transients leaks, bursts and other anomalies reducing the number of failures and increasing asset health.

Stuart is a Chartered Civil Engineer who has worked in the UK water industry for 47 years, as a water company engineer and manager, a consultant, contractor, service and equipment supplier, and assurance provider for the industry regulators.

His specialism is in all aspects of water distribution in particular water leakage.

With Malcolm Farley he co-authored the handbook on water loss management and has been a member of the IWA Water Loss Specialist group for over 20 years.

Since 2015 he has been a director of Invenio Systems, and he currently acts as Project Director for the project on Managing Background Leakage financed through the Ofwat Innovation Fund.

Ahmed is a final year PhD candidate at Lancaster University. He graduated with a MEng
Mechatronics degree from Lancaster University, Dean’s Award, ‘Best 1st year PhD candidate’ nominee and shortlisted for ‘Best concept in Development’ Eco-I NW Awards.

His research revolves around exploring the best machine learning (ML) models for applications in the water industry. Deep Reinforcement Learning materialises all of the industry’s hopes toward real-time experience-driven and reliable control and, therefore, has become the focus of his studies.

Diego Kalegari is a Product Manager for the Siemens Meter Data Management product suite with a focus on billing and CIS integration, as well as leads our product strategy for water utilities.  He has a software engineering background with a Masters in Evolutionary Computation. He has 14 years background as software developer, application engineer, solution architect and business development on SCADA, ADMS and MDM.  The last 2 years he moved to product management and is working close with water utilities around the globe to identify and show the value of meter data management on their daily operation beyond Meter to Cash. The main focus of these initiative is using meter data to identify customer side leakage and integrated with other systems to improve network leakage identification.