British Water Members' Handbook 2017 2017 Edition | Page 53

UK FORUM
The role of the UK forum is to provide focus for British
Water activities in the UK marketplace.
The UK Forum holds two main meetings each year,
which address issues that are relevant to the supply
chain, such as the client’s capital programmes,
spend patterns, workload, skills requirements and
innovation. The meetings, which usually include a
visit to a member’s facilities or to a water industry
project, include presentations from new members
and presentations and/or workshops focussing
on topical issues. They also off er an excellent
opportunity to network.
The success of the UK Forum is built on its regular
liaison meetings with major players in the sector.
Delegations of between 10 and 12 members represent
the group at meetings with the ten water service
companies in England and Wales plus Scottish Water
and Northern Ireland Water, where discussions are held
with senior procurement and engineering staff on a
range of relevant topics.
BIM4Water
British Water provides the secretariat to the BIM4Water
group which exists to support organisations in the
water sector with the adoption of Building Information
Modelling (BIM), or ‘Better Information Management’
(see article on page 60 for more information).
BIM4Water is a cross-industry group open to all
organisations involved in the management and
delivery of water and wastewater assets. The group’s
make-up is refl ective of the sector, involving clients,
contractors, consultants, suppliers, subcontractors
and other bodies.
BIM4Water is a partner to the UK BIM Alliance which
was launched in October 2016 to continue the work
started by the BIM Task Group which is central to the
delivery of the Government’s BIM strategy.
There are also liaison meetings with the economic and
environmental regulators in both England and Wales
and in Scotland.
The UK Forum conducts a client performance survey
on a yearly basis. This involves members and non-
members ranking clients’ performance on a number
of criteria, such as communication, contractual
approach, procurement practice, business practice
and health and safety. The outputs of the survey are
used to provide valuable feedback to the companies
on how they are viewed by the people that work with
them, and the results are published on the British
Water website.
www.britishwater.co.uk
53