Member Spotlight

Martin Crawford, Group Client Partner – Capgemini

Capgemini is a global business and technology transformation partner, helping organisations to accelerate their dual transition to a digital and sustainable world, while creating tangible impact for enterprises and society. It is a responsible and diverse group of 340,000 team members in more than 50 countries. With its strong over 55-year heritage, Capgemini is trusted by its clients to unlock the value of technology to address the entire breadth of their business needs. It delivers end-to-end services and solutions leveraging strengths from strategy and design to engineering, all fueled by its market leading capabilities in AI, generative AI, cloud and data, combined with its deep industry expertise and partner ecosystem. The Group reported 2024 global revenues of €22.1 billion.

How does behavioral change, both within utilities and among customers, impact sustainability and efficiency efforts?

In short, it has a massive impact. In terms of within utilities, shifting mindsets toward data-driven decision-making and digital adoption is key. Currently, we’re focused on gathering loads of data from smart meters, sensors, and other technologies with river quality monitoring being a very topical one right now. What we want to do is take all this new data we are collecting and use it to turn it into meaningful actions. For example, with river quality monitoring, we can now get all this new insight into river health by using physical and remote sensors, and AI. But the real crux is actually using that data to drive environmental improvements to rivers. We are starting to do that as we are currently working with a UK water company to look at how we will use the monitoring data to actually address root pollution causes and drive up river quality.

We see the same thing here with customers with sewer monitoring, for example. We’ve got all the data and insight we need in terms of informing customers on what not to put down the sink, and the negative impact this has on the network, but it is a consumer behavioural mindset change we also really need to engrain into the next generation through educational efforts. Clearly, this also needs to go beyond what people put down the sink and feed into other areas so sustainable thinking becomes the norm.

With increasing regulatory and sustainability pressures, how does Capgemini support utilities in meeting standards while driving long-term environmental and societal benefits?

Capgemini supports utilities in navigating regulatory and sustainability challenges by leveraging a broad range of capabilities, from strategic consulting to operational services. Our global footprint allows us to work with utilities end-to-end, ensuring compliance while also driving long-term environmental and societal benefits.

We take a tailored approach, recognising that there is no one-size-fits-all solution and work with each client differently to suit their needs. By working closely with each client, we help them optimise their asset base – whether that’s by creating smarter assets to run more efficient systems, or by upgrading existing assets to become ‘smart’.

A key strength of Capgemini lies in our ability to take proven solutions and scale them across the sector while adapting them to the unique needs of each client. Different projects and client environments require us to work with different supply chain partners and delivery models, and we integrate these factors into our approach when looking at how to best drive some of these regulatory and sustainability targets.

How important is it to bring lessons from other industries into the water sector?

While this is no doubt important, it must be balanced with deep sector expertise. Having industry-specific knowledge is crucial, but that’s not to say we can’t draw from the advancements in other fields such as pharmaceuticals and manufacturing. Both of these industries can help drive meaningful innovation in utilities.

For example, our growing credentials in digital construction and intelligent industry solutions enable us to apply best practices from these sectors that have successfully implemented smart factories and automated production. This type of thinking can be directly applied to the water sector as if we think of a utility network as a collection of small factories spread across a large geographic area. We can then take some of the methodologies from manufacturing such as AI, machine learning, and automation, and look at how do they use these technologies to optimise operations, improve efficiency, and enhance the roles of the front-line workers within the sector. This cross-industry innovation is at the heart of our intelligent industry approach, helping utilities achieve greater resilience and sustainability.

Capgemini played a pivotal role in Scottish Water’s ‘Amazon for Pumps’ approach, streamlining procurement and asset management. How did this idea take shape, and what impact has it had on efficiency and cost savings?

Every day Scottish Water engineers make hundreds of visits to inspect above and below-ground assets, with many being identified for repairs or replacement. Historically a typical ‘non-complex’ project could take a year to complete with slow, labour-intensive processes introducing excess time and cost. While often individually relatively small in scale and value, this equipment performs important functions and, if not maintained, can impact other assets, potentially resulting in significant incidents, recovery costs, and reputational damage.

As annual investment in these assets is predicted to rise by almost 250% to £175 million by 2027, the cost of these overheads for each project would surge too, to more than £11 million each year. Based on these projections, Scottish Water took the decision to redesign the way it handles this work, with a vision to create a technology-enabled, Amazon-style business model to handle these needs.

As Scottish Water’s long-standing technology transformation partner, we sought to turn this vision into a reality. We deployed a combination of mobile app development, internet portal creation, process optimisation, backend integration, and digital technologies across Scottish Water’s entire lifecycle – including procurement, supply chain, and engineering. The resulting end-to-end solution, Non-Complex Service Delivery (NCSD), embraces multiple business functions, delivers substantial cost savings, automation, efficiency gains, and sustainability benefits.

In designing the new solution, we applied many hallmark principles of the successful Amazon approach – e.g., the need for speed, unwavering faith in data and insights, and confidence in automation and digital technologies to enable financial control and empower employees.

The results on cost savings and efficiencies speak for themselves.

• £5 million cumulative cost savings and efficiencies per year.
• Reduction in delivery time from months to weeks.
• Overnight automated approvals for up to 60% of needs.
• Equivalent of 40,000 hours of productive time saved per year.
• Carbon impact calculated for all needs.
• Considerably simpler, more intuitive, and more efficient process for engineers in the field.

For young professionals looking to build a career at the intersection of water and technology, what skills and mindsets will be most valuable in the coming years?

First and foremost, having a good grounding in the sector and a general understanding of water operations is good. I’d urge young professionals to have a look at and ask questions on how water companies currently deliver their major programmes, their capital programmes and how they run their operations and areas of frustration / inefficiency. This will give you a good understanding of where the water sector is looking to go, how they want to use technology and the challenges they face.

Regarding key skills, the rise in data, AI and analytics and of course sustainability is definitely something I believe will come to the fore in the near future. So, being able to read and interpret data into useful actions in addition to having some knowledge of environmental science will be highly valuable.

Whilst my career in the water industry has been built through account management, if I could turn back time and start again, I’d be looking to get some more years of operational experience on the ground so you can actually see how the organisation works day-to-day. While there you can start to look at developing an analytical mindset and begin to think about how I can take what I’m doing today and make it more efficient and improve it. It’s also a great opportunity for young professionals to consider what initiatives or projects can I get involved in that will help drive these efficiencies and sustainable benefits into society.