JULY - AUGUST - 20239 ENVIRONMENTAL BUSINESS REVIEWTony Harringtonofferings within and beyond the sector; and supporting the sector's journey on open data. The obvious beneficiaries to Spring will be the UK water companies and their customers, in finding new and better ways of doing things, and the supply chain - in providing services and technologies more efficiently and at a lower cost. But Spring's work is centred around delivering benefits for customers, society and the environment. As such, along with financial benefits, success will be measured against broader outcomes-based criteria. These are yet to be tied down with KPIs but may well include carbon reduction and measures such as how much of an economic boost has resulted from the support provided to startups. It is also hoped that Spring could offer a "safe voice" in feeding collective experience back to UK regulators in a way that would be more difficult and less powerful for an individual company to do. Seeking and helping to develop innovative regulatory change is very much part of Spring's remit. For Spring to move to its full functionality, it has submitted a circa £4m `enabling' bid to the Transform stream of the second round of Ofwat's Water Breakthrough Challenge innovation competition. This would help carry Spring through the remaining years of the AMP to 2025 by when it should be broadly self-sustaining. Spring will not rely purely on water industry funding; Spring will look to increase funding from other sources over time. Spring sees many options here, with potential funding sources in the supply chain and academia, from innovation specialists like Innovate UK and sectors like energy and agriculture where there are obvious synergies with water. Indeed, in framing the organisational design of Spring, its founding team have been mindful of the benefits and opportunities that are operating at arm's length from the water industry can bring. In April 2022, Spring will find out if its funding bid has been successful and whether it can expand its services to deliver the water sector's Innovation strategy deliverables and, from there, start to drive significant value for the whole UK water sector and its customers. contact and operation; demystifying the sector; offering a third-party space to have conversations and explore options; facilitating the sharing of experiences and ideas; removing duplication and inefficiency, and speeding up change. Underpinning the two primary services, Spring will also seek to improve innovation skills and training, including signposting stakeholders to existing
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