Businesses need to plan for outages as well as long-term responsible use

(by Karma Loveday)

Businesses are leaving themselves exposed to risk by concentrating their water resilience activities on long-term stewardship, but neglecting to put equal emphasis on how to maintain continuity in the short term during a supply disruption.

That’s according to a new paper from alternative water provider Water Direct and facilities management giant Mitie. From stewardship to continuity: reframing water resilience for business leaders champions a “dual water resilience approach” which reflects two complementary priorities:

• Long-term resilience, focused on responsible water use and sustainable supply.

• Operational resilience, focused on maintaining continuity during disruption. 

Water Direct and Mitie argued that disruption is occurring more often and lasting longer, but that many organisations struggle to answer two straightforward but critical questions: how long they can continue operating without water, and how quickly they could return to normal once supply is restored. Hence they need to maintain focus on long-term water stewardship but also build greater short-term operational resilience to outages.