Managing Resilient Water Utilities

Block 2: The Resilient Water Utility

In the second block, the course looks at how resilience has been incorporated in the strategy and operations of water utilities. Different water utilities tend to have different understandings of resilience and will emphasize different operationalizations of the concept. Particularly in the Netherlands where both surface water and groundwater utilities co-exist, we see that different water providers develop different understandings of what a resilient water utility entails.

As the course is co-organized by VEI Dutch Water Operators visits to different water utilities will be facilitated to be able to understand from utility staff themselves how their utility approaches resilience.

Block 3: Organizing Change for Resilient Utilities

The final block looks at how shifts to becoming a resilient water utility takes place in practice. Often water utilities have established a working culture and ways of operating that have not changed much for a long period of time. Moreover, a lot of staff of water utilities tend to work at these organizations for a long time. In such a context it is relatively difficult to develop and implement change management programmes that seek to make the utility more resilient as it may require changes in the way of working and changes in attitudes of employees.

This block thus engages with the question how organizational change can be facilitated to establish new working procedures and attitudes. In this block a combination of more theoretical class-room sessions will be combined with exercise-like workshop sessions and visits to water utilities to learn from experiences of water utilities that have gone through this change management process.