The Independent Water Commission’s 2025 Report calls for trials that deliver real adoption. Isle’s Trial Reservoirs Initiative achieves a 75% success rate—triple the market average—by aligning strategy, operations, and rollout.

Delivering the Cunliffe Report / Water Commission’s Vision: Why the Trial Reservoirs Initiative is Ready to help Implement Innovation at Scale

En Independent Water Commission’s 2025 Final Report calls for a bold reset of the UK’s water sector: integrated strategy, outcomes-based regulation, de-risked innovation, and trials that actually scale.

At Isle, we’ve been doing just that – through the Trial Reservoirs Initiative.

Designed to overcome the barriers that keep promising technologies from scaling, the Trial Reservoirs Initiative delivers real-world trials with rigour, operational alignment, and strategic rollout. And the results speak for themselves:

Trial Reservoir technologies have a 75% success rate – three times the market average.

That’s not a coincidence. It’s the result of strategic design, operational alignment, and rigorous pre-trial planning.

Why Most Sandboxes fail before they begin

As the Commission notes, too many innovations fall into “pilot purgatory”, where trials are run in isolation, with no viable path to adoption:

“There has been a slow adoption of new technologies and solutions… which often get stuck in ‘pilot purgatory’. Public and political scrutiny… is making it more difficult to justify experimental or high-risk innovation.”

- Commission Report, Section 1004, p. 420

Rigid regulations, unclear pathways, and a lack of system-wide integration make even successful trials hard to scale:

“The regulatory landscape seems to have unintentionally created barriers to innovation… Rigid legislative frameworks or unclear pathways make it difficult for companies to trial novel approaches.”

- Section 1005, p. 420

Sandboxes are often disconnected from operational teams, budgets, and rollout strategies.  Innovation teams are seen as “tinkerers” not because they aren’t capable, but because the systems they work within don’t empower them to deliver change. 

Trialling isn’t the risk. Poorly designed trials are.

What Trial Reservoirs Initiative Does Differently

Led by Dr. Jo Burgess architect of South Africa’s Water Research, Development, and Innovation Roadmap (2015-2025), the Trial Reservoirs Initiative model was built on a systems-thinking foundation—designed not just to test technologies, but to enable their adoption.

Here’s how we ensure results that scale:

1. Strategic Pre-trial qualification

We evaluate site, system, and team readiness before any trial starts:

• Economic viability and downtime
• Process train compatibility
• Site representativeness of most urgent and common challenges
• Training, compliance, and change capacity

Pre-trial readiness is the most under-valued success factor in innovation planning.

2. Operational Realism

Trials are only meaningful if they reflect real-world operating conditions: environmentally, technically, and culturally.

3. Change Management and Procurement integration:  

From the start, we align trials with internal champions in procurement, field and central operations, legal, and finance. If people can’t adopt a new solution, the trial failed, even if the tech itself worked.

4. Scalable Rollout Path

Trial Reservoirs Initiative helps utilities define a realistic and cost-effective path from demonstration to implementation, prioritising readiness, timing, and system fit. Not box-ticking. 

The Cunliffe Report Backs This up

The Commission didn’t just call out the problem, it outlined a better way forward. Trial Reservoirs Initiative aligns directly with key recommendations:

“The UK and Welsh Governments should introduce structured regulatory sandboxes to support innovation uptake.”

— Recommendation 83, p. 463

“Water companies should be able to test new concepts in real-world conditions, without being subject to the full regulatory burden.”

- Section 1013, p. 422

“Ringfenced mechanisms and more equitable innovation funding should be considered.”

- Recommendation 84, p. 463

Trial Reservoirs Initiative already embodies these principles—and it’s working.

Why This Matters for Government Stakeholders

Policymakers now face the challenge of turning the Commission’s vision into implementation. That means designing trials and sandboxes not just to explore, but to deliver outcomes, uptake, and public trust.

Trial Reservoirs Initiative provides a proven, scalable model to support this:

Strategic alignment to public objectives

• Clear accountability and integration
• High success rate (75% vs. ~25% industry average)
• Global experience and local delivery

“Change cannot take place overnight… A disciplined, clear framework is needed to implement recommendations in a measured and coordinated way.”
- Section 1026, p. 428

 

Let’s work together.

Email: [email protected]