Scaling up of innovation in water utilities

A PhD student will embed themselves inside Yorkshire Water to track exactly why some promising innovations spread across the utility while others stall and die. Water companies routinely develop new technologies and processes—better pipe-cleaning methods, smarter leak detection, more efficient treatment chemicals—but many never make it from a single trial to company-wide use. This project addresses that gap. It treats the innovation itself, not the technology, as the object of study. The student will first build a framework from published literature, then test it against real cases inside Yorkshire Water, including a discolouration project already developed by the supervisors. Interviews and group exercises with engineers, managers, and external partners will map the turning points that accelerate or derail adoption. If the research succeeds, it will produce a practical guide and training programme for water utilities. That could mean that good ideas—ones that reduce customer complaints about brown water, cut treatment costs, or lower energy use—actually get used across the entire network rather than remaining one-off projects. The work is applied, not fundamental science. Its value lies in making the water industry better at learning from its own successes.