Wessex launches Marketplace to open its challenges to third party solutions

Wessex Water has launched a first-of-its-kind web platform to enable third parties to contribute solutions to challenges it is facing.

Through the new Marketplace platform, Wessex will present challenges the company is looking to solve and any data associated with them and invite others to offer a potential solution. As part of the launch, the company released two initial challenges and datasets on the Marketplace website: reducing phosphorous levels in the Hampshire Avon river catchment and replacing analogue Public Switched Telephone Network services across its sites, which will be redundant by 2025.

Chief innovation officer, David Elliott, said non-asset solutions will be important. “We, like all other water companies, have a lot of performance commitments to achieve during the next AMP. The outdated practice of building and operating all our own assets without any interaction with the wider market could prevent us from meeting some of these commitments.

“Asset solutions can’t achieve everything we need to deliver at an affordable cost, or without consuming more carbon. Through the Marketplace we will be able to engage and collaborate with other organisations such as NGOs, charities, local authorities, energy companies and community groups to solve our problems in a more holistic and sustainable way.”