This week, industry regulator Ofwat confirmed that The Rainwater Management Platform project - led by Wessex Water, CIRIA, Stantec and HRWallingford, and with collaborative support from UKWIR - has been awarded £2 million via the Ofwat Innovation Fund to develop the national Platform: a one-stop digital tool designed to ensure what falls from the sky is properly valued and treated as a resource before being returned, uncontaminated, to the environment.

Across the UK and Ireland, there is a fundamental problem at the root of how rainwater is valued, managed and stored. Currently, despite the increasing challenges of climate change and a growing population, rainwater is rarely managed where it lands or recognised as the immensely valuable resource it is. In the eyes of the industry-wide coalition behind the Rainwater Management Platform project, both the sector and society at large are missing a trick.

This innovative project, spearheaded by UKWIR Board Member and Wessex Water’s Director of Infrastructure Development, Matt Wheeldon, seeks to solve this inefficiency, proposing a systems-rethink approach to how rainwater is managed across England and Wales.

According to Wheeldon: “Rainwater plays a critical role in supporting all of mankind and is a plentiful resource in the UK, yet it is ubiquitously wasted and undervalued. Our infrastructure is just not designed to manage it well where it lands. Yet with a changing climate - with weather patterns moving from “drizzle” to “drought and deluge”, this is exactly what needs to happen.

“Nationally,” continued Wheeldon, “property level rainwater management is fragmented, inefficient and often non-existent. The Rainwater Management Platform will replace the outdated SuDS (Sustainable Drainage Systems) Manual with a modern, user-friendly digital resource that can be tailored to users – from homeowners to drainage engineers. We need to see a national philosophical shift that sees rainwater treated firstly as a resource before we return it to the environment.”

While SuDS can reduce flood risks, improve water quality, and provide many benefits when done right; poor design, construction, and maintenance often lead to failing assets and negative public perception. Currently, the industry’s leading guidance is outdated, static, and presented in the form of a 1000-page guide. The Platform will focus on updating and re-working this best practice guide for digital delivery.

Further, the project aims to build in learnings from over ten years of new knowledge, research and technologies, embedding the principles of good rainwater management, including rainwater reuse. The Platform will replace the SuDS Manual with a modern, user-friendly, searchable resource tailored to its audience, from homeowners to drainage engineers. Targeted, prescriptive guidance and tools will ensure good SuDS are consistently delivered at all scales, from single properties to large new build or retrofit schemes.

Not only will the Platform support national skills development surrounding the reuse and management of water, the tools will also improve asset performance, thereby reducing the levels of pollution entering our waterways and, crucially, cutting costs for customers.

UKWIR is proud to have played a key role in convening collaboration across the entire UK and Irish water sector to drive forward this transformative project. This collaborative force, paired with an Ofwat Innovation Fund grant, will drive a digital transformation of current guidance and technical standards to mainstream the benefits of better rainwater management for customers, society, and the environment in the UK and beyond.