A Day in the Life of Affinity Water’s Customer Delivery Team & why a career in the water industry is worthwhile
Affinity Water has opened up its doors to its customers by recording a new podcast with its Customer Delivery Team to explain how it plans and responds to both planned and unplanned works across its three regions and the skills needed to pursue a career in the water industry.
Not only will these works help to guarantee it has enough water to meet future demand they will also help to protect rare local chalk streams and offers an opportunity for those interested to take up a role in a sector helping to protect the environment.
With 3.6 million customers the Customer Delivery Team knows how important it is to fix and repair leaks and to respond to incidents quickly while updating customers through the alerts on its website of their Teams progress. They are committed to letting Customers know at the earliest possible opportunity when the supply will be fully tested for water quality and restored.
As well as unplanned works the Customer Delivery Team is also engaged in planned works renewing old pipes on its networks to keep water supplies running and of the highest quality.
The Company plans to invest around £8M in replacing mains proactively from 2020 to 2025. It will also be investing in innovative technology to drive down leakage, with an aim to have reduced leakage by 20% by 2025.
In the #podcast we travel to the Stevenage Office and attend a planned repair in the County which began as an unplanned incident offering an opportunity to upgrade and renew the network of pipes.
We talk to the Customer Delivery Team as they go about their work: Alex Hayton Head of Operations; Phil Adams, Business Lead North; Rob King, Regional Operations Manager; Tom Stoten, Regional Operations Manager; Leon Chandler, Customer Service Technician.
As Phil explains the Stevenage Office otherwise known as the Broomin Green site, is home to a sampling centre, a water quality team, the network team with field technicians, a leakage team and a planning team. It also houses significant production teams and assets. The assets include a borehole supplying water to parts of Stevenage which dates from 1934, as well as a treatment works.
Phil elaborated: “We have an excellent water quality and sampling team here at Stevenage, but also all of our water quality teams across our three regions are conscious of water quality and maintaining the very highest standard of water quality at all times. We deal with planned and unplanned issues, we deal with emergencies and burst mains. And we assist customers with poor pressure and locating stop taps. There is a very broad variety of activities that we participate in”.
Alex said: “It is great to see the Team are dealing with an incident like this as business as usual. This was an unplanned work, and then it developed into a planned work to stop future issues arising. I have been with Affinity Water for 15 years and in the industry for 20 years. Through all of the training Affinity Water provides I have progressed my career to now being a Head of. It is motivating to see the experience and the commitment from the Team who want to do it. With everything we do the customer is at the heart of what we do, while making sure our Teams are safe as they go about their work. We have thousands of years of experience in our Teams, and we all work together”.
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