Water: The Industry Technology Opportunity
Clean water is one of the foundations of civilisation.
It protects health, sustains communities, supports agriculture and industry, enables housing and economic development, and preserves the natural environment. Few services matter more, yet water infrastructure is often noticed only when something goes wrong: a supply interruption, pollution incident, burst main, sewage discharge, flooding event or contamination warning.
Behind every glass of drinking water is an immense physical system of reservoirs, rivers, boreholes, treatment works, pumps, valves, pipes, sewers, storm overflows and wastewater facilities.
Much of this infrastructure is ageing, geographically dispersed and difficult to inspect. Some assets are buried. Others operate in remote locations, harsh environments or communications black spots. Deterioration can occur gradually, intermittently and almost invisibly.
The water industry therefore faces a fundamental information problem:
How can operators and regulators know what is happening across millions of individual assets—accurately, continuously and early enough to act?
The evidence from England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland suggests that ownership alone does not answer this question.
Privately owned companies have underperformed. Publicly owned utilities have also underperformed. Drinking-water quality is generally excellent, but wastewater control, leakage, asset visibility and infrastructure delivery remain inconsistent across all models.
The common requirement is better operational evidence.
An essential service with a mixed record
It is important to describe water-industry performance fairly.
Public drinking water across Britain and Ireland is generally of an exceptionally high standard.
In England, the Drinking Water Inspectorate reports consistently high compliance with drinking-water standards, with many individual measures exceeding 99.9%.
In the Republic of Ireland, 99.8% of public-supply samples complied with microbiological limits in 2025 and 99.7% met chemical standards. More than four million people received water meeting very high public-health standards.
Northern Ireland Water has also broadly delivered against its clean-water and consumer-service targets.
These are major achievements. They demonstrate the expertise of operators, engineers, scientists and regulators responsible for treating and distributing drinking water.
The more difficult picture emerges in leakage, wastewater treatment, sewer capacity, environmental protection and infrastructure resilience.
England and Wales: private ownership, public consequences
Most water and wastewater services in England and Wales are provided by regulated private companies. Their performance has varied substantially between companies and across different areas of service.
Ofwat’s review of the 2020–25 regulatory period recorded improvements in areas including internal sewer flooding and support for vulnerable customers. But it also found extensive underperformance, resulting in more than £700 million being returned to customers through bill reductions over five years. Ofwat has also reported approximately £240 million in financial redress from enforcement and related action.
In 2023–24 alone, the sector recorded a net underperformance payment of approximately £157.6 million.
At that stage:
leakage had fallen by only 6% against a target of 16%;
pollution incidents had reduced by approximately 2% against a target of 30%;
companies had overspent their combined water and wastewater allowances while generally underspending funding allocated for service enhancements.
Environmental performance has been particularly concerning.
In 2024, England’s nine water and sewerage companies recorded 2,801 water-quality pollution incidents. Of these, 2,469 originated from sewerage assets. Serious category 1 and 2 incidents increased from 47 in 2023 to 75 in 2024—a rise of approximately 60%.
The Environment Agency awarded the nine companies a combined total of only 19 environmental-performance stars in 2024, down from 25 in 2023 and the lowest total since that assessment began in 2011. Only one company achieved the highest four-star rating.
Storm-overflow performance improved during the much drier year of 2025. England recorded 291,492 monitored spill events—35% fewer than in 2024—while total spill duration fell by 48%. However, the Environment Agency cautioned that rainfall heavily influences annual comparisons and that sustained maintenance and investment are still required.
Financial resilience has also become a serious regulatory concern. In 2023–24, Ofwat had concerns about 10 of the 16 largest companies. The National Audit Office found that some water companies had paid dividends during 2020–24 despite making limited or no profit.
Private ownership has brought investment and operational expertise, but it has not consistently aligned shareholder returns, infrastructure resilience, environmental performance and customer outcomes.
Northern Ireland: public ownership constrained by public funding
Northern Ireland Water is government-owned. Its difficulties therefore arise within a different ownership and financial structure.
NI Water has broadly delivered against its consumer-service and clean-water targets. The Utility Regulator’s latest detailed assessment nevertheless found overall underperformance in wastewater services up to the end of 2023–24.
The most significant shortfalls concerned:
wastewater-treatment works;
unsatisfactory intermittent discharges;
delivery of planned wastewater outputs;
infrastructure capacity.
By March 2024, NI Water had completed only 10 large wastewater-treatment upgrades against an indicative cumulative target of 22. The company attributed the gap to programme reprofiling, reassessment of project requirements and emerging capital-funding constraints.
Leakage was approximately 155 million litres per day in 2023–24. NI Water is targeting a reduction to 150 million litres daily by 2027–28.
Across one year, leakage at the 2023–24 rate equates to:
[155\text{ million litres}\times365=56.6\text{ billion litres}]
Not all network leakage is technically or economically recoverable, but the figure demonstrates the scale of the efficiency opportunity.
The more immediate economic constraint is wastewater capacity.
In parts of Northern Ireland, the wastewater network can no longer accommodate substantial new connections. This affects:
housebuilding;
commercial development;
planning;
public-service expansion;
environmental improvement;
local economic growth.
The Belfast Living With Water programme illustrates the scale of the challenge. Its projected cost has increased by approximately £700 million, or 60%, to more than £2.1 billion.
The Northern Ireland Audit Office has concluded that historic funding shortfalls contributed to capacity problems and restricted NI Water’s ability to keep pace with required water and wastewater investment.
In 2023–24, NI Water received approximately £550 million in revenue. Around 72%—approximately £398 million—came from a Department for Infrastructure subsidy in place of direct domestic water charges.
This creates a structural difficulty.
The Utility Regulator can identify the investment required and set performance expectations, but NI Water’s ability to deliver ultimately depends upon annual Executive budgets and competing public-spending priorities.
NI Water has therefore underperformed in important wastewater areas, but the cause cannot be reduced to company inefficiency. It is a combination of operational performance, ageing infrastructure, limited capacity and an uncertain public-funding model.
The Republic of Ireland: high-quality drinking water, major network losses
Uisce Éireann is also publicly owned and operates as the Republic of Ireland’s national water utility.
Its drinking-water performance is strong. In 2025:
microbiological compliance reached 99.8%;
chemical compliance reached 99.7%;
ten at-risk supplies were resolved;
public drinking water remained safe for more than four million people.
But approximately 36% of treated water is still lost through leakage each day.
This is a substantial financial and environmental inefficiency. Water must first be abstracted, treated, pumped and often chemically conditioned before it enters the distribution system. Water lost from that system carries the embedded cost and energy of every preceding process.
Wastewater performance presents another major challenge.
The Environmental Protection Agency reported that, during 2024:
15 towns and villages were discharging raw sewage daily;
14 large towns and cities failed EU wastewater-treatment standards;
those 14 locations accounted for approximately 49% of wastewater collected in Ireland’s large urban areas;
34 priority areas had wastewater discharges adversely affecting rivers, lakes, estuaries or coastal waters;
Uisce Éireann had not given sufficient priority to designing and delivering required improvements at 27 of those 34 areas.
The concentration of wastewater at the Ringsend treatment plant in Dublin significantly affects the national totals. The plant served a peak population equivalent exceeding 2.6 million in 2024, illustrating how the performance of one critical facility can influence national compliance.
There has also been meaningful progress.
The volume of raw sewage discharged daily had halved from early 2024, while the number of priority areas requiring wastewater improvement declined from 148 in 2017 to 72 by July 2026.
Uisce Éireann’s planned expenditure of up to €16.9 billion during 2025–29 demonstrates both the seriousness of the infrastructure deficit and the scale of the commercial opportunity associated with its correction.
Different ownership models, similar infrastructure problems
The comparisons lead to an important conclusion.
Water-sector underperformance cannot be explained solely by private ownership.
Private companies in England and Wales have produced unacceptable pollution outcomes, missed regulatory targets and, in some cases, developed serious financial-resilience problems.
Publicly owned NI Water has struggled to deliver wastewater upgrades and capacity because of historic underinvestment, programme delays and dependence on constrained government budgets.
Publicly owned Uisce Éireann provides high-quality drinking water but continues to experience severe leakage and significant wastewater-treatment deficiencies.
The structures are different, but many of the underlying problems are similar:
ageing assets;
incomplete knowledge of asset condition;
leakage;
insufficient wastewater capacity;
fragmented operational information;
slow delivery of capital programmes;
reactive maintenance;
intermittent monitoring;
inconsistent data standards;
difficulty distinguishing funding shortfalls from operational underperformance;
limited evidence that investment has produced the intended result.
Ownership determines who is responsible. It does not automatically provide the operational visibility required to discharge that responsibility.
The public-sector oversight challenge
Across these jurisdictions, regulators and government departments must oversee complex networks operated by organisations possessing much more detailed information about their own assets.
That creates a natural information imbalance.
An economic regulator may understand the funding allowance but not the physical condition of every pump, pipe or treatment asset.
An environmental regulator may see a discharge or failed sample without having access to every upstream operational condition that contributed to it.
A drinking-water regulator may identify excellent compliance while still warning that ageing infrastructure presents future resilience risks.
A government department may approve an investment programme without receiving continuous evidence that the completed assets are operating as intended.
The National Audit Office found that water regulators in England and Wales lacked a sufficiently complete understanding of infrastructure condition because they did not possess a comprehensive set of asset-condition metrics.
The same essential problem is visible elsewhere: oversight is only as strong as the information available to support it.
If information is reported annually, the regulator is looking backwards.
If it is heavily aggregated, local failures can disappear within regional averages.
If different organisations use different methodologies, comparison becomes difficult.
If monitoring is incomplete, the absence of reported failure may be mistaken for good performance.
If data comes primarily from the regulated organisation, public confidence can remain weak even when that data is accurate.
Effective regulation therefore requires more than additional rules or penalties.
It requires reliable evidence.
Inspection alone cannot provide continuous assurance
Physical inspection remains essential, but the scale of water infrastructure makes continuous human inspection impossible.
If an engineer visits a pumping station for two hours once a year, the proportion of the year directly observed is:
[\frac{2}{8{,}760}\times100=0.0228%]
More than 99.97% of the year remains unobserved directly.
During that time, the asset may experience:
pressure variation;
abnormal pump cycling;
intermittent power consumption;
rising temperature;
short-duration equipment faults;
blockages;
overflow events;
changing environmental conditions;
gradual deterioration.
A fault that appears for ten minutes every week may never be present during a scheduled inspection.
Continuous sensing does not replace engineering inspection. It allows inspections to be targeted, informed and verified.
Monitoring an event is not the same as understanding it
The installation of event-duration monitors on storm overflows is an important advance. It establishes when an overflow operated and for how long.
But it does not necessarily establish:
the volume discharged;
the pollutant loading;
why the overflow occurred;
upstream sewer levels;
available network capacity;
pump condition;
rainfall intensity at that location;
energy availability;
whether an obstruction was present;
whether another controllable asset failed;
whether early intervention was possible.
The overflow is frequently the final visible event in a longer operational chain.
A more complete understanding could combine:
flow;
pressure;
water level;
rainfall;
pump status;
energy consumption;
temperature;
environmental conditions;
equipment state;
discharge duration;
water-quality indicators.
The objective is not to collect data indiscriminately. It is to establish cause and effect.
If a wastewater level rises, is the cause heavy rainfall, groundwater infiltration, pump failure, inadequate storage or a blockage?
If energy use increases, is more water being moved or is equipment becoming inefficient?
If a discharge occurs, was the system genuinely beyond capacity or did an avoidable equipment problem contribute?
If an infrastructure upgrade is completed, did the frequency or duration of the problem actually decline?
These are operational questions with financial and regulatory consequences.
The financial opportunity
The scale of planned expenditure reveals the scale of the opportunity.
England and Wales are entering a £104 billion water-sector investment programme for 2025–30, nearly twice the preceding programme. Approximately £10.2 billion is associated with storm-overflow improvements, while around £720 million has been identified for smart technology and metering intended to assist leakage reduction.
Northern Ireland’s principal Belfast drainage and wastewater programme is now estimated at more than £2.1 billion.
Uisce Éireann’s forecast expenditure for 2025–29 is up to €16.9 billion.
Collectively, these programmes represent tens of billions of pounds and euros in infrastructure, engineering, monitoring, control, data and maintenance activity.
But expenditure is not itself an outcome.
Every investment programme should be capable of demonstrating:
the condition before intervention;
why the particular asset was prioritised;
what work was completed;
whether the completed work functions correctly;
what measurable improvement occurred;
whether that improvement persisted;
whether customers and the environment received value.
The prize is not simply installing more equipment.
The prize is verified improvement.
What better water technology should achieve
Water-sector technology must produce more than dashboards and additional volumes of data.
It should help operators, governments and regulators:
detect deterioration earlier;
locate leakage more accurately;
reduce unnecessary abstraction and treatment;
improve pumping and energy efficiency;
understand wastewater capacity;
prevent avoidable pollution incidents;
distinguish genuine emergencies from faulty readings;
target maintenance and capital expenditure;
confirm whether corrective work has succeeded;
establish dependable historical evidence;
compare expected and actual performance;
provide information at the asset as well as remotely;
protect sensitive operational data;
continue functioning when external communications fail.
It must also be commercially realistic.
A system dependent upon extensive additional infrastructure, multiple gateways, complex integrations, permanent cloud connectivity and continuing subscriptions may become too expensive to deploy at the number of locations required.
The strongest technology will make existing infrastructure more visible without adding disproportionate complexity.
The important Tigertek conclusion
The evidence from England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland leads Tigertek to a clear conclusion:
The fundamental opportunity is not determined by whether the utility is privately or publicly owned. It is created by the continuing gap between physical infrastructure and dependable operational understanding.
England and Wales demonstrate that private finance and regulation do not automatically guarantee environmental performance or financial resilience.
Northern Ireland demonstrates that a public utility cannot deliver infrastructure beyond the funding consistently made available to it.
The Republic of Ireland demonstrates that excellent drinking-water quality can coexist with high leakage and substantial wastewater deficiencies.
Each jurisdiction has a different structure. Each nevertheless requires more accurate information about what is happening across its assets.
Tigertek’s ambition is to contribute to a comprehensive approach to water and wastewater intelligence without imposing unnecessary infrastructure.
That ambition extends beyond one instrument or one measurement. Pressure, flow, energy, temperature, humidity, environmental conditions and equipment status can each reveal part of the operational picture.
The challenge is to turn those separate measurements into dependable, intelligible and timely information.
Tigertek is working towards capabilities relevant to:
water-distribution monitoring;
pressure and asset-condition awareness;
leakage identification;
pump and energy efficiency;
wastewater control;
environmental monitoring;
local operational visibility;
secure data handling;
differing communications environments;
integration with existing infrastructure where appropriate.
The precise technical architecture remains part of Tigertek’s continuing research and development.
The commercial objective is simpler to state:
Accurate operational understanding, directly where it is needed, with less unnecessary infrastructure, complexity and cost.
This is not an attempt to replace water-company expertise, engineering judgement or regulatory authority.
It is an ambition to give each of them better evidence.
The prize
The prize is larger than the technology market alone.
It includes:
safer and more resilient drinking water;
cleaner rivers, lakes and coastal waters;
fewer wastewater discharges;
reduced leakage;
lower energy consumption;
earlier fault detection;
fewer emergency repairs;
better use of public and private capital;
more housing and commercial development;
stronger regulatory evidence;
improved company performance;
greater public confidence;
increased resilience against climate change and population growth.
Most importantly, the prize is certainty.
Knowing that water is safe.Knowing that equipment is operating.Knowing that wastewater is controlled.Knowing that investment has worked.Knowing that reported performance reflects physical reality.Knowing what is happening before a fault becomes a crisis.
Clean water is too important to manage through assumptions, fragmented information or delayed reporting.
Across public and private ownership alike, the next stage of water-industry improvement must be built on accurate sensing, continuous awareness, secure information and demonstrable outcomes.
That is the shared challenge.
It is also the opportunity.
