Piers Clark reflects on year one with Jo Burgess, pulling out a set of clips that show the range of “front lines” utilities are now operating on. You can explore the full episodes mentioned at the links below:

Mykolaiv, Ukraine – running a city under fire
Mayor Oleksandr Syenkevych describes waking to find trunk mains deliberately blown up in three separate locations—a visceral account of operating critical infrastructure in an active conflict zone and restoring service when the network has literally been attacked.
 
Slums and Favelas: Philippe de Roux and “Better With Water”
Philippe de Roux explains how Better With Water supplies water to slums and favelas in low-income countries where conventional utilities avoid service due to collection risk and operational difficulty. His organisation has built a model that is both socially embedded and financially disciplined.
 
Las Vegas, USA – 22 years of drought on the Colorado River
Doa Ross from the Southern Nevada Water Authority explains what a multi-decade drought looks like in practice: less inflow, changing hydrology, and the reality that this is no longer a “supply problem” alone but a long-term demand and operations management challenge.

Cape Town, South Africa – using “Day Zero” as a pivot point

Mike Webster reflects on how crisis provided political and public cover for accelerating water reuse schemes, restructuring the utility with a stronger commercial focus, and increasing collection rates and revenues by ~20%, enabling up to a fourfold increase in capital investment. It’s a clear case study in not wasting a good crisis.

Bucaramanga, Colombia – maintaining trust after restrictions
Natasha Avendaño took a city into severe restrictions just six days after stepping into the CEO role. Crucially, when restrictions were lifted a year later, customers didn’t bounce back to old habits; consumption remained below expected levels, showing how behaviour can shift when communication and trust are handled well.

Iberian Peninsula – grid failure as a real-time stress test

Nuno Brôco from Aguas do Tejo Atlantico (Portugal) unpacked a voltage disturbance that escalated into system-wide power loss across Spain and Portugal. His key takeaways: test extreme scenarios in advance to discover failures you’d never spot on paper, don’t assume mobile phones solve communication, and use incidents to diagnose, prioritise and implement resilience measures.

Kangaroo Island, Australia – bushfires and staff resilience
David Ryan, Chief Executive at SA Water, ttook on the role weeks before the Kangaroo Island bushfires. His focus landed on people: staff commitment and organisational culture showing its true face when things go badly wrong.

Barwon Water, Australia – embedding First Nations values

Shaun Cumming shares how Barwon Water is reshaping organisational values around First Nations principles through cultural awareness training, a “Leading Through a Cultural Lens” programme for executives, and embedding “Caring for Country” principles in business cases. This is resilience through identity and values, not just infrastructure.

Pittsburgh, USA – going beyond the legal boundary on lead

Will Pickering explains Pittsburgh’s lead replacement programme, which includes customer-owned lead service lines, not just utility-owned assets. It cost more and carried legal risk, but was recognised as the right public health decision.

Pakistan – rebuilding at 50,000 homes a month

Khalid Mehmood describes a post-flood rebuilding programme delivering 50,000 homes per month, with 20,000+ people trained to reconstruct their own homes and 99% of families entering a bank for the first time. Only once basic shelter was secured could large-scale water and sanitation investments be unlocked.

Honolulu, USA – the Red Hill fuel spill

With 20 underground tanks each holding around 12.5 million gallons sitting just 100 feet above critical aquifers, the Red Hill Fuel Spill is a textbook example of the interdependence of defence, fuel infrastructure and drinking water security.