How Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water uses AIM to link risk, resilience and regulation in a unique planning landscape.
Client:
Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water
Location:
Wales
Consulting Partner:
ICS Consulting, AECOM, supported by Probit
Asset Types:
Water and wastewater networks, Trunk Mains, Rising Mains, Pumping Stations, Water and Waste Treatment Works
AIM Version Used:
AIM 2.2 – 4.2
Key Outcome:
Embedded platform for risk-based investment planning across 3.4 million assets, aligned with both Ofwat and Welsh Government regulatory frameworks
Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water (DCWW) is one of the UK’s largest water and wastewater service providers, supplying over 3 million people across Wales and parts of western England. As a not-for-profit company under the Glas Cymru ownership model, it reinvests all profits back into the business for the benefit of customers and communities.
Operating in a devolved policy environment, Welsh Water must align with Welsh Government legislation such as the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, alongside meeting Ofwat’s regulatory expectations.
With 1.2 million water and 2.2 million wastewater assets, it faces a complex planning challenge unlike any other UK utility.
The challenge
Welsh Water needed to strategically plan investments across an extremely large and diverse asset base while balancing performance, customer outcomes, and cost.
Regulatory pressure from Ofwat demanded precise, evidence-backed investment justifications across five-year Asset Management Plan (AMP) periods. At the same time, Welsh Water had to meet devolved priorities, including sustainability, biodiversity, and long-term environmental outcomes, under Welsh law.
This dual compliance environment made it essential to link asset risk directly to measurable customer outcomes while maintaining transparency, agility, and regulatory readiness across multiple planning cycles. This included examining the potential effect of climate change on some of their ageing asset base.
Who worked on this project?
Welsh Water worked with AECOM, ICS Consulting and Probit to implement and refine the AIM platform, first used as part of PR14, and again in PR19 and PR24. ICS, as lead consultant, played a key role in aligning AIM with the relevant service and multi capitals value framework, required by Ofwat, to value investment decisions.
This work enabled DCWW and regulators to trace asset health and risks directly to Measures of Success (MoS), such customer minutes lost, leakage, complaints, flooding, and pollution events. ICS and AECOM configured the AIM environment and supported Welsh Water’s team with model development and data integration, embedding robust analytical capability within the business and supporting a long-term roadmap of sustainable, risk-based investment planning.
How was AIM used?
AIM was applied extensively across Welsh Water’s network to support long-term asset investment decisions. Core applications included:
- Asset performance and deterioration modelling – forecasting service impacts and costs over AMP cycles
- Risk mapping and monetisation – translating asset failure into measurable economic and customer consequences, including Willingness to Pay
- Scenario optimisation – balancing budgets, regulatory targets, and system-wide performance across multiple strategies
- Climate change modelling – to determine future investment requirements
- Visualisation and communication – using AIM’s RiskView dashboard to share planning outputs with stakeholders across the business
AIM’s capabilities allowed Welsh Water to plan, model, and justify investment decisions with exceptional precision and speed across the entire asset base, from asset to network level, and anywhere in between.
The results
AIM delivered clear and substantial benefits:
- Greater planning certainty – linking deterioration models to robust investment forecasts
- Shortened planning cycle – enabling faster turnaround of complex scenarios
- Improved compliance – providing a structured, audit-ready framework for Ofwat submissions
- Better internal alignment – through transparent modelling logic and stakeholder-accessible dashboards
- Enhanced confidence – internally and externally, in the strategic value of investment plans
These benefits made AIM an indispensable part of Welsh Water’s strategic and regulatory toolkit as they look forward to PR29.
Dr Phil Jonkergouw
Managing Director, Probit
Technical insight
AIM supported Welsh Water at scale, operating across the entire asset base, including 1.2 million sewers and 600k water mains, with full asset-level granularity. This allows results to be rolled up or down depending on the end use.
Its flexible risk map framework allowed Welsh Water to define failure probabilities and consequences with direct ties to cost, performance, and service risk. The platform’s Gurobi-powered optimisation engine enabled fast and unbiased scenario analysis, handling thousands of interventions and constraints in parallel. AIM also featured predictive modelling, data infilling for missing attributes, and a structured workflow for UKWIR Common Framework compliance.
These capabilities made AIM an ideal fit for complex, multi-layered planning in a devolved regulatory environment.
What followed for Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water and AIM?
Welsh Water is now gearing up to use AIM as part of the upcoming PR29 regulatory submission and exploring widening the capability to include more upcoming stringent pollution and overflows targets.
AIM’s potential to be used more tactically within the AMP planning and delivery targets is also being considered.
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