How Thames Water uses AIM to manage strategic asset investment at scale.
Client:
Thames Water
Location:
London and Thames Valley, UK
Consulting Partner:
ICS Consulting, Atkins; supported by Probit
Asset Types:
Water & wastewater networks, trunk mains, demand management, treatment works and other above-ground plant
AIM Version Used:
AIM 1.2- 3.6
Key Outcome:
Full lifecycle investment modelling across £30bn+ asset base, with embedded optimisation and scenario planning
Thames Water is the UK’s largest provider of water and wastewater services, supplying 9 million water and 14 million wastewater customers across London and the Thames Valley.
Its vast infrastructure estate includes 32,000 km of water mains, 108,000 km of sewers (including PST private sewers), and more than 450 water and waste treatment works.
Managing this critical network under intense regulatory scrutiny and evolving customer expectations demands sophisticated, long-term investment planning.
The challenge
With ageing assets, regulatory pressure, and increasing service expectations, Thames Water needed to optimise its investment decisions across multiple asset classes.
Its five-year AMP planning cycles (PR14, PR19, PR24, etc) required highly detailed, evidence-based investment submissions to Ofwat, the UK water regulator.
Traditional tools were not adequate to model the risks, costs, and benefits at asset and equipment level across the large infrastructure networks and complex system assets.
Thames Water needed a platform that could enable asset-level modelling, scenario planning, and optimisation at scale, while integrating seamlessly with its existing enterprise systems.
Who worked on this project?
Thames Water was the first client to adopt AIM in 2012. Since that time, many trusted consultants and SMEs have worked alongside Thames Water to help configure and populate AIM with the data, predictive models, and logic needed to generate data-driven decisions. This has included ICS, Atkins, as well as Probit in a supporting role.
In the initial and first deployment, Probit’s co-founders, Dr Philip Jonkergouw and Dr Tim Watson, provided expert technical guidance, model configuration, and training, helping embed AIM within Thames Water’s internal teams and processes, and transferring knowledge and expertise to their consulting partners.
How was AIM used?
Thames Water selected AIM in 2012 after a global search for asset investment planning decision support tools. Since then, AIM has become embedded across almost all parts of the company’s asset base. Key features included:
- Granular asset-level modelling across over 1 million network assets, plus hundreds of thousands of above-ground units.
- Risk mapping to model pre- and post-intervention consequences, with direct links to failure likelihood, mitigation cost, and customer Willingness to Pay.
- Sophisticated cost modelling, using Thames Water’s own EES models, SAP repair data, and other proprietary inputs.
- Scenario optimisation, supporting hundreds of ‘what-if’ runs with different constraints, investment levels, and risk targets – used extensively in PR19 and PR24 preparation.
Applications ranged from:
- STW investment modelling, covering over 300 works and £1.4 billion in replacement costs.
- Trunk main investment planning, targeting £240m optimally across 3,500 km.
- Integrated Demand Management, to model long-term savings via metering, mains replacement, and efficiency schemes.
The results
AIM enabled Thames Water to optimise asset investments with a total value exceeding £5 billion, and in later stages up to £30 billion, by supporting detailed, auditable, and regulator-ready models. Specific results included:
- £240m in optimised trunk mains investment since 2015, with scenario modelling supporting AMP7 PR19 submissions.
- STW investment planning for 312 works, with full cost and compliance validation.
- Reduction of pollution incidents below historical levels and improved targeting of proactive interventions.
- Faster modelling turnaround, allowing internal teams to run hundreds of scenarios without third-party support.
- Enhanced return on investment, ensuring that funds were deployed where they would deliver the greatest impact.
Simon Moore
London Water System Planning Manager, Thames Water
Technical insight
AIM’s implementation at Thames Water included high-fidelity model validation, advanced cost mapping at sub-process level, and integration of uncertainty quantification.
AIM’s Risk Map feature linked failure probability with operational impact, while its high-speed optimisation engine (powered by Gurobi) enabled rapid in-memory calculations across millions of assets.
The platform’s ability to expose and tune model coefficients gave Thames Water detailed control over mitigation planning, expenditure decisions, and service risk forecasting, all while remaining regulator-compliant and aligned to Ofwat methodology.
What followed for Thames Water and AIM?
Thames Water continues to expand its use of AIM as a core business planning tool into PR19. The company is also upgrading to AIM 4.2 SaaS to allow increased collaboration amongst internal teams and external partners.
Another potential application being examined is the transitioning of AIM into tactical operations, particularly for its increasing water mains replacement programme, where it will be used within year to plan and refine individual pipe replacements and help generate annual programmes of work.
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