Water

The desire for a CI culture is manifested in managers developing CI project nominations, allocating budget resources to complete CI projects, participating in CI projects, meaningful consultation with all stakeholders and staff and customers accepting change.

In many countries the water sector is regulated by a government body that sets service standards, approves tariffs and monitors and report upon performance. Should a water utility under-perform, the regulator will intervene to ensure the failed performance is rectified. The culture of working towards service standards and achieving a required level of compliance of those standards is driven to some extent by the regulator.

From this high level regulatory requirement, utilities then develop further and externalize their service standards and require all service managers to conduct their service to meet those standards. Service standards are documented in a customer charter being either an internet web page or a physical document that is issued to any customer upon request.

Following on from the Customer charter, managers and service providers are then obliged to deliver their service in a manner that meets or achieves the service standard to a level of compliance agreed between the manager and the executive. For managers and their staff, achieving this level of compliance is a very clear goal and systems and resources are organized to do this through dynamic monitoring key performance indicators.

Compliance targets also feature in the managers’ and staffs’ job statements and for senior managers and some other staff, financial bonuses are paid for achievement of, or exceeding their performance targets.

Actual compliance rates or performance is then routinely reported back to stakeholders by way of annual reports or through other communication media such as flyers or addendum to bills as shown in KPIs reported to customers.

Other Evidence of a CI Culture

• CI being featured in the mission statement of the organization
• CI being specifically funded in the utility’s budget
• CI or CI projects being specifically named in business plans
• Appointment of a CI facilitator or CI coordinator
• Establishment of a CI Steering Committee that reports to the Executive Management Group
• Customers’ expectation of innovative change and continuous service or product improvement
• The use of current and relevant technology
• Being known in the sector as a Best Practice operator
• Performance being best in class across the sector, as reported in the regulator’s performance report.