The news is generally filled with a sewage dumping story here and there and so its worth a think around this without fully going into the politics (which plays a huge part for sure).
Just poor assets or….
There is a simple narrative to why this happens that can be captured in a cause and effect statement such as ‘because we haven’t invested in new/improved assets then we get pollution incidents’.
Yes, this is absolutely a reason. Low investment in an aging asset base is going to have its consequences BUT it definitely is not the only reason.
People are a big part of any solution!
If you consider a picture of all of the assets in all of the land and what sits around them there will be a bunch of people in it. Some of them will be working on the assets, some will be managing those people. Some will be reviewing data and making decisions. They will ALL be doing a set of behaviours and they will ALL be working in a certain way to a conceived design of work.
This in itself has a huge impact on how an asset (that cannot think for itself) will perform its function and importantly how it interacts with other assets to optimise the system as a whole.
There is more at play than just the age of the asset base, the opportunity for improvement is huge. The way that you and your people think and act has a direct impact. There are thousands of us, everyday
So, when thinking about how you are going to tackle the big challenges of asset failure and unwanted outcomes, are you asking…..
What are the opportunities in the system (which includes our people and designs of work) that are available?
How are we improving towards meeting these challenges through our people?
How does our current design of working help us to optimise what we have got to work with?