Delivery>Execution>Reliability>
Scaling Performance Improvement>
8 & 9 December 2026, London
Delivery>Execution>Reliability>
Scaling Performance Improvement>
8 & 9 December 2026, London
Wastewater companies face a challenge that goes beyond making the right investment decisions. The conditions in which wastewater networks, treatment works and associated infrastructure must operate are changing, while expectations for environmental performance, asset reliability and regulatory compliance continue to rise.
More intense rainfall can overwhelm available storage and treatment capacity. Prolonged wet weather can leave networks saturated, while infiltration consumes valuable hydraulic capacity without a single additional customer connection. At the other extreme, drought and sustained low flows create different pressures: higher pollutant concentrations, reduced dilution and changing hydraulic and biological conditions that can affect treatment performance.
The challenge is not simply to invest in more infrastructure. It is to determine which interventions will make the greatest difference, how to deliver them consistently across entire wastewater systems, and how to prove that the improvements are real.
The Wastewater Performance & Resilience Congress 2026 brings these interconnected challenges together across two days, examining the strategic, operational and technical decisions that determine whether wastewater systems become more dependable, resilient and efficient.
With AMP8 programmes under way, wastewater utilities must decide how best to combine capital investment, operational improvements, smarter monitoring, preventative maintenance and better use of existing infrastructure.
What works in one catchment may not work in another. The real question is which combination of interventions will deliver the greatest improvement under particular hydraulic conditions, asset constraints and risk profiles — and whether the evidence is strong enough to justify the decision.
How do utilities also prevent the major pollution incidents they can no longer afford to experience, while systematically eliminating the smaller recurring failures, inefficiencies and asset weaknesses that undermine everyday performance?
And how can they move beyond reactive maintenance and isolated improvement projects towards more predictable, preventative and consistently reliable operations?
The congress is deliberately strategic, delivery-focused and technically specific, bringing together wastewater utility case histories, engineering experience and practical lessons from implementation.
The programme begins with investment priorities, AMP8 delivery and system-wide resilience, before examining how better risk assessment, monitoring, asset intelligence, predictive maintenance and organisational capability can translate into earlier interventions and more effective operational decisions.
It then moves into the practical challenges of improving performance across treatment works, pumping stations, rising mains, sewers and storm overflow systems — including preventing serious pollution incidents, addressing recurring asset failures, managing infiltration, recovering hydraulic capacity, optimising existing infrastructure and determining when rehabilitation offers better value than replacement.
The emphasis throughout is on closing the gaps between investment, delivery, asset reliability and measurable operational improvement. Better information must lead to better decisions. Capital investment must translate into improved performance. And interventions that work on individual assets must be capable of being sustained and, where appropriate, repeated across wider networks and catchments.
Across the two days, delegates will compare approaches, challenge assumptions and examine what can realistically be applied across different wastewater systems.
When should utilities rehabilitate rather than replace? What level of redundancy is proportionate to the risk? When should repeated reactive maintenance trigger a capital decision? How much spare hydraulic capacity can genuinely be recovered? Which indicators provide sufficiently early warning of serious pollution incidents to prevent them? How should nature-based wastewater assets be maintained and funded over 25 years? And how do we demonstrate that a claimed performance improvement was caused by an intervention rather than favourable weather?
Through practical utility case studies, extended panel discussions and interactive roundtables, the congress provides an opportunity to examine not just what has worked, but why it worked, under which conditions, what it cost, what could have been done differently and whether the results can be replicated at scale.
Ultimately, the Wastewater Performance & Resilience Congress 2026 is about turning investment and operational improvement into more dependable wastewater performance — preventing avoidable failures, recovering value from existing assets and delivering measurable improvements that can be sustained across entire systems.
We spent the best part of three weeks speaking directly to wastewater utilities to research and develop this event, and we certainly didn't cut any corners.
Our research extended well beyond England, Wales and Scotland. We also spoke to utilities across Northern and Eastern Europe, Greece and further afield, including the Middle East, to build a broader picture of the challenges facing the sector, the approaches being taken and, importantly, what utilities can learn from one another.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, we found considerable interest in the UK experience, particularly among Northern European utilities, but also from countries such as Greece and across the Middle East.
And there's a good reason for that. The UK wastewater sector is operating under an exceptionally demanding regulatory regime, with intense scrutiny of environmental performance, investment decisions and delivery. The eyes of the world are on what happens next.
HEAR FIRST-HAND HOW UTILITIES ARE:
Turning capital into performance: delivering AMP8 at scale without the programme overwhelming delivery capacity or destabilising live operations.
Choosing the right interventions: prioritising investment by risk, consequence and environmental outcome, and choosing the right mix across a whole catchment rather than asset by asset.
Preventing the incident they cannot afford: controlling serious pollution at treatment works, pumping stations and rising mains.
Ending the failures that keep happening: eliminating the repeat blockages, pump trips and process upsets that cumulatively drag performance down.
Getting more from what they already own: recovering hydraulic headroom through infiltration reduction, surface water removal, active control and better use of storage before pouring more concrete.
Proving it worked: separating the effect of an intervention from the effect of the weather, and knowing when the evidence is strong enough to claim the benefit.
BENCHMARKS
How does your performance, practice or approach compare with peers facing the same problem? Examples include how often critical controls are independently tested, what share of alerts lead to a genuine field finding, how many repeat blockages trigger a rehabilitation decision, and how long schemes are monitored before benefit is claimed.
FAILURE STORIES TOLD HONESTLY
Not just what went well, but also what went wrong and why: the scheme overwhelmed by an exceptionally wet winter, the risk model that pointed at the wrong catchment, the new asset that created an operational problem, the near miss that almost became a serious incident.
METHODOLOGIES AND DECISION-MAKING
Structured approaches you can adopt. Examples include the risk → assumption → choice → outcome → lesson review of investment decisions, a common scoring basis for serious and everyday risk, whole-system assurance for pumping stations, and weather-adjusted baselines for proving benefit.
EXPANSION OF PEER RELATIONSHIPS
Direct contact with the people solving the same problems elsewhere. Networking breaks, lunches and the drinks reception are built into the programme. The conversation started in a session can continue as a site visit, a data-sharing arrangement or a phone call when the next incident happens.
REGISTER TODAY TO SAVE POUNDS
Book today or before 9 November to save hundreds of pounds on the 2-day live pass.
1. Should We Change Course On Any AMP8 Investments?
What we'll examine: How utilities are reviewing their early AMP8 investment choices. Have the highest-risk catchments turned out to be the biggest problems? Have changes in cost, delivery constraints or recurring failures altered the case for particular investments?
What you could take away: Useful approaches to reviewing your own investment portfolio, together with insights into how other utilities are accelerating, adapting or resequencing programmes ahead of AMP9.
2. How Do We Deliver Faster Without Losing Control Of Outcomes?
What we'll explore: How utilities are addressing delivery bottlenecks involving modelling, commissioning, outages, power connections and specialist contractors — and preventing short-term delivery targets from favouring easier schemes over those with greater operational or environmental importance.
Practical value: Examples of how utilities are strengthening delivery capacity, alongside approaches to operational acceptance and ensuring new assets perform as intended once commissioned.
3. Where Should The Next Pound Go: The Rare Disaster Or The Everyday Failure?
The discussion: How do you compare a rising main that has never burst but could cause catastrophic pollution against a pumping station that trips every month? We'll examine how utilities weigh severity, likelihood, environmental consequences, failure frequency and the cumulative operational burden.
What this could help you do: Reconsider how risks are assessed and prioritised across your own asset base, including which emerging evidence should trigger a change in investment priorities.
4. Which Controls Must Never Fail, And How Do We Know They Won't?
What we'll examine: The critical operational controls, safeguards and testing arrangements used to prevent serious pollution incidents — including how utilities establish whether safeguards remain effective and what should happen when tests reveal weaknesses.
Points to take back: A better understanding of the controls worth reviewing across your own estate, together with examples of escalation triggers when multiple smaller weaknesses begin to create a serious risk.
5. When Should We Stop Repairing And Start Replacing?
What we'll explore: The evidence that can justify moving from repeated sewer cleansing to rehabilitation, from pump replacement to station redesign, or from ongoing maintenance expenditure to a capital intervention.
What you could take away: Practical examples of intervention thresholds and the evidence used to support investment decisions, including blockage clustering, CCTV findings, fault histories and standby equipment running hours.
6. Is This Treatment Works More Fragile Than Its Compliance Record Suggests?
What we'll examine: The operational warning signs that annual compliance figures may not reveal — including operators repeatedly rescuing a process, standby equipment running continuously, recurring instrumentation faults and declining operational headroom.
Practical value: Ideas for strengthening works-level performance reporting, with greater attention to the reliability indicators that can reveal emerging vulnerabilities before they become compliance failures.
7. What Is The Cheapest, Fastest Way To Recover Hydraulic Headroom?
What we'll compare: The relative merits of infiltration removal, surface water separation, active network control, additional storage, pumping optimisation, treatment capacity improvements and nature-based solutions — including available evidence of how much capacity individual interventions have actually recovered.
What you could take away: A more informed basis for comparing options within your own catchments, and a clearer understanding of the questions that need answering before committing to a particular intervention.
8. Can We Trust Our Data Enough To Act On It?
What we'll examine: How utilities reconcile conflicting information from sensors, telemetry, maintenance records, customer reports and weather data — and determine when that evidence is sufficiently reliable to justify operational action.
Potential lessons: Approaches to turning alerts into decisions and interventions, including practical ways to reduce false alarms, improve confidence in data and avoid overwhelming operational teams with unnecessary notifications.
9. Can We Prove The Investment Worked?
What we'll explore: How utilities establish credible performance baselines, account for weather variability, attribute improvements to particular interventions and determine appropriate monitoring periods. We'll also examine what happens when the expected benefits fail to materialise.
What this could help you do: Strengthen the way improvements are measured and reported, and challenge whether apparent reductions in incidents or storm overflow activity reflect genuine improvement rather than favourable weather conditions — a particularly important distinction following the relatively dry conditions experienced during 2025.
10. Is Our Organisation Set Up To Act Quickly?
What we'll examine: How utilities are bringing decision-making closer to assets and catchments while maintaining accountability, retaining critical operational knowledge and helping frontline teams work confidently with new monitoring systems and technologies.
What you could take away: Examples of how other organisations are clarifying decision-making responsibilities, reducing delays between identifying and addressing problems, and building the operational capability needed to sustain improvements.
