What To Expect

The realities of managing business water demand now require a different kind of industry conversation — one grounded in strategic resilience, operational delivery, market coordination, and the practical use of non-household smart meter data.

The objective is to create an environment where utility resilience teams, NHH smart metering teams, retailers, market bodies, major water users, planners, data specialists, technology providers, and NHH customer engagement teams can have a serious and practical discussion about one of the most important — and still underdeveloped — challenges in the sector.

Not just: how do we collect more data?

But the real question is how the market uses that data to respond to today’s water resilience pressures: coordinating across wholesalers, retailers and customers, engaging the right users, reducing avoidable consumption, and strengthening resilience planning where the pressure is greatest.

The event is deliberately structured across two connected but distinct days.

Day One Focuses On The Strategic Resilience Challenge

That means upgrading forecasting methodologies for future non-household demand, understanding large water users' consumption patterns, assessing data centres and industrial growth, exploring local water stress, testing market incentives, and asking how wholesalers, retailers, customers, planners, and economic development stakeholders can work together to reduce future demand.

Day Two Moves Into Operational Delivery

That means the practical reality of non-household smart metering and demand intelligence: deployment, data quality, continuous flow, leakage, retailer coordination, customer engagement, alert prioritisation, benchmarking, operational workflows, measurable savings, and proof of impact.

Both days are connected by the same objective: understanding demand more clearly and reducing avoidable consumption where it is genuinely achievable.

Why The One-Room Format Matters For This Issue 

This event will take place in a single plenary room, supported by one shared networking area.

That is deliberate.

Many events divide attendees across multiple streams, breakouts, side rooms, and competing agendas. That approach works when the goal is breadth.

Our objective is depth.

The format, therefore keeps people together.

Everyone hears the same presentations.

Everyone hears the same questions.

Everyone sees where different parts of the market agree, where they disagree, and where the practical delivery gaps still sit.

That shared experience matters because the strongest discussions are often not created by the presentation itself, but by what happens after it: a question from a retailer, a challenge from a wholesaler, a practical example from a major user, a clarification from a market body, or a technology provider explaining what is actually possible at scale.

That is when the conversation becomes genuinely insightful and useful.

Who Will Be Participating

The audience is deliberately built around the different groups that all hold part of the answer.

Utility Resilience & Water Resources Teams

For resilience planning, demand forecasting, and investment teams, the event will help clarify how future business demand is changing, where existing forecasting approaches are weakest, and how better consumption insight can support more realistic planning decisions.

They will hear from peers and market participants on:

• Forecasting future non-household demand
• Understanding data centres and other high-growth users
• Assessing local water stress and growth corridors
• Using demand-side options before new supply becomes the only answer
• Improving visibility of large-user demand before it arrives
• Prioritising action in areas where resilience pressure is greatest

NHH Smart Metering & Demand Intelligence Teams

For smart metering, data, analytics, leakage, and demand intelligence teams, the event will focus on how smart meter programmes move beyond installation into measurable value.

For these teams, the value is partly operational and partly strategic. Day Two helps with delivery. Day One helps show where smart meter insight can create the greatest resilience value.

Retailers

Retailers told us that any event needs to be commercially realistic, as opposed to idealistic. 

They need insight and engagement models that are practical enough to use with customers and realistic enough to fit the way the non-household market actually works.

So we've listened and dedicated significant time to discussing:  

• What incentives are needed to make demand reduction worth engaging with
• How smart meter insight can support better customer conversations
• How demand reduction can become part of customer service rather than just an additional obligation

Major Water Users

Large water users need to understand how water resilience, smart meter data, usage insight, and demand reduction affect their own operations.

Different users care about different things: cost, continuity, facilities management, process efficiency, cooling, maintenance access, production disruption, tenant behaviour, compliance, sustainability reporting, business resilience, or clinical and operational risk.

The event will help major users understand:

• How their water profile is seen by utilities and retailers
• How smart meter data can reveal leakage, wastage, abnormal use, or process inefficiency
• How benchmarking can support internal investment cases
• How future demand can be communicated without unrealistic commitments
• How water resilience could affect long-term operational planning
• How to engage earlier with utilities where growth, expansion, or site change is planned

Market Bodies, Regulators & Policy Stakeholders

For market bodies, regulators, and policy stakeholders, the event provides a useful view of what is actually blocking progress on the ground.

The discussion will expose:

• Where data sharing is working and where it is not
• Where incentives are misaligned
• Where smart meter investment is creating measurable outcomes
• Where retailer-wholesaler workflows still need improvement
• Where customers are not responding
• Where resilience planning needs better demand intelligence
• Where the market structure itself makes delivery harder

The value is implementation realism: seeing how policy, regulation, market design, customer behaviour, data quality, and operational delivery interact in practice.

Technology, Analytics & Solution Providers

For technology providers, analytics firms, smart metering specialists, leakage intelligence companies, data platforms, and customer engagement providers, the event is not designed as a generic showcase.

The event creates a stronger environment for useful provider participation because the discussion is grounded in real market problems, not abstract technology potential.

Why The Emphasis On Curated Discussion & Interactivity Matters

Most people have experienced it.

Too many long presentations.

Too many slides.

Too little time for the question everyone actually wants answered.

That is not the format here.

Most presentations will be concise of around 15 to 20 minutes each and designed to establish context, not dominate the session.

Important value comes from the moderated discussion, audience Q&A, peer exchange, and the ability to challenge assumptions in the room.

The research was clear: attendees want interpretation, not just information.

Benefit from:

• Operational realism
• Measurable outcomes
• Implementation lessons
• Forecasting methodologies
• Resilience frameworks
• Investment prioritisation insight
• Peer benchmarking
• Candid discussion around what is not yet working

That is why Q&A is not treated as a small add-on at the end.

It is one of the main features of the event.

Why The One Shared Networking Environment Matters

The formal sessions are important.

The panel discussions are important.

But some of the most valuable conversations will happen between them.

A question raised during a session on data centres may become a deeper discussion over coffee between a utility planner, a developer, and a retailer.

A point made during a panel on retailer-wholesaler coordination may continue over lunch with a market body and a smart data provider.

A challenge raised by a hospital estate or manufacturer may lead to a more useful conversation with a wholesaler about what customer data can realistically be shared earlier.

What Attendees Should Expect To Leave With

Attendees should expect to leave with:

• A clearer understanding of how business water demand and the market is evolving 
• A sharper view of where forecasting assumptions are weakest
• Practical insight into data centres, industrial growth, public estates, healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, and other high-consumption users
• A better understanding of how smart meter data can support operational action today and better resource planning over time
• Practical examples of retailer-wholesaler coordination that move beyond “better collaboration”
• A clearer view of which commercial incentives could make demand reduction more realistic and scalable 
• Operational lessons on data quality, alert prioritisation, continuous flow, leakage, customer engagement, and savings verification - ensuring the big picture ROI is delivered back from NHH smart metering investments in terms of making full use of that data 
• Benchmarking insight into smart meter maturity, customer response, leakage KPIs, and measurable savings
• New professional relationships across utilities, retailers, large users, market bodies, planners, and solution providers
• Ideas that can be applied immediately within your own organisation