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Welcome to The Executive Exchange, a premier podcast series for on-the-go senior executives. Each episode features short, impactful podcasts where industry leaders share key insights and experiences from the water industry.
[00:00:00] Piers Clark: Welcome to the Exec Exchange, 15-minute podcast in which a leader from the water sector shares a story to inspire, inform, and educate other water sector leaders from around the globe.
[00:00:11] Piers Clark: My name is Piers Clark, and my guest today is Dr. Marcus Rink, the Chief Inspector at the Drinking Water Inspectorate here in the UK, the DWI.
[00:00:21] Piers Clark: Marcus, wonderful to have you with us.
[00:00:23] Marcus Rink: Oh, it's a great pleasure. Always happy to come along and talk about water.
[00:00:26] Piers Clark: Well, you've had a long career in it, and let's start by delving into that.
[00:00:31] Piers Clark: Can you give me the potted history of how you became Chief Inspector of the DWI?
[00:00:36] Marcus Rink: My career is, as you rightly have said, is a long career in water. But it didn't start in water, it started in medical science.
[00:00:43] Marcus Rink: I started on medical research and I went to work as a medical scientist. But realizing that unfortunately working for our public health system doesn't always give the adequate reward for those who work there, I ended up working for the Agricultural Development Advisory Service, ADAS.
[00:01:01] Marcus Rink: And I stepped into what was environmental microbiology before moving on to a public analyst. And while I was there the public analyst was taken over by a water company actually.
[00:01:14] Marcus Rink: So I ended up in the water industry, pure by chance. And I actually worked in a water company for about eight years, where I was largely managing a number of laboratories for a water company who was branching out in commercial analytical laboratories.
[00:01:29] Piers Clark: And take me through the timeline. When did you join the DWI?
[00:01:33] Marcus Rink: I like to say someone pointed out to me that there was a job going in DWI as an inspector. And I thought, "Oh, well, that's interesting. Well, I know about public health. I know about water. I know about microbiology and chemistry and actually I had a good grounding in law because I was taught well by the public analyst around food safety law and so on.
[00:01:54] Marcus Rink: So I joined the DWI in 2002 as an inspector, became a principal inspector in 2008. And then about a year after, I became the DCI, Deputy Chief Inspector to the then Chief Inspector, Professor Jeni Colbourne.
[00:02:11] Marcus Rink: I then found myself as the Chief Inspector in 2015 when Jeni decided to retire. So it's about 11 years or thereabouts now that I've been Chief Inspector.
[00:02:22] Piers Clark: Tell me, what does the Chief Inspector do? What's your role?
[00:02:26] Marcus Rink: It's a statutory position. And my role is delegated by the Secretary of State for the Environment and Welsh ministers.
And the role is specifically to deliver compliance with the Water Industry Act and the Water Supply Water Quality regulations. Oversee, the local authorities in respect to private water supplies. But also it is a technical role and therefore, I offer and provide advice to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of State's officials in respect of regulation.
[00:02:57] Marcus Rink: The duties cover largely water quality and sufficiency. Sufficiency in the context of insufficient water being a public health risk. It also covers Security and Emergency Management Direction. And we took that over three or so years ago from DEFRA. And also I have a responsibility to deliver the network information systems which was regulations that were laid in 2018.
[00:03:23] Marcus Rink: And that puts together the duty of ensuring that water which is abstracted, treated, stored and distributed arrives either at commercial premises or domestic premises that is fit for purpose and wholesome, i.e. it contains no organism, substance or any combination of which might be a harm to health.
[00:03:43] Marcus Rink: And that includes all the systems, the operational technology systems, the security systems around that, and all the physical systems to ensure the water supply is maintained secure, and the alternative supplies as well.
[00:03:56] Marcus Rink: So it's a huge remit across England and Wales, and covers what is effectively the safe delivery of 15 billion liters per day to 55 million people.
[00:04:08] Piers Clark: I was recently talking to someone about the regulatory bodies we have in the UK, Ofwat, Environment Agency, and DWI. And I rather simplified your role as being you're the people that make sure that what comes out of the tap is wholesome and safe.
[00:04:22] Piers Clark: You're policing that activity and ensuring that that's what's happening.
[00:04:26] Marcus Rink: Yeah, policing is probably the right word here because it's exactly what we do. We look at the compliance data, we look at audit, we look at what customers are seeing or experiencing or telling us.
[00:04:38] Marcus Rink: And we look at the risk assessments. So it's really a policing role. And as well as when things go wrong, and that means we need to investigate and decide whether there has been any societal impact, was there any culpability and was there any harm? So there's an investigatory role.
[00:04:55] Marcus Rink: DWI is not so much an organization but a collective of inspectors who each in their individual powers and rights carries out inspection, audit or investigation. And then makes recommendations to the Chief Inspector to decide what is the appropriate action that comes from those recommendations.
[00:05:16] Piers Clark: And let's put some numbers to it. How many inspectors are in the DWI?
[00:05:21] Marcus Rink: At the moment, our total staff number is about 57-58 people and are attempting to raise that to about 70, particularly as we go through transition.
[00:05:30] Marcus Rink: About 45 of those are technically qualified, so these would be people who are microbiologists, chemists, engineers, cyber specialists, security specialists, and so on. And then we have a team who are data analysts, database managers. And then of course we have an administrative support team.
[00:05:49] Marcus Rink: We receive about four million compliance points per year. Well, it is 1.75 million lines of risk assessment. We carry out something like 80 audits a year, investigate 550 circumstances where things haven't gone quite right.
[00:06:05] Piers Clark: Now you made reference there to the transition. For our overseas listeners, just explain what you meant by the transition.
[00:06:12] Marcus Rink: Traditionally, there have been three regulators, so that's Ofwat, the Environment Agency and the Drinking Water Inspectorate. But there's also an element of natural England as well.
And over the last few years, there's been an increasing disquiet about the way that regulation's been delivered. And that resulted in an audit by the National Audit Office which indicated that regulation wasn't being delivered entirely properly.
[00:06:38] Marcus Rink: And then that subsequently followed a commission by the government to create the Independent Water Commission led by Sir Jon Cunliffe, and his role was to look at regulation in the round and to make recommendations to government about what should be done to improve regulation.
[00:06:55] Marcus Rink: We were really pleased actually that he identified Drinking Water Inspectorate as being the only functioning regulator within the regulatory framework that was functioning effectively and efficiently.
[00:07:07] Marcus Rink: But nevertheless, there was an opportunity there to bring those regulators together to work as a unitary regulator that makes one decision rather than there being conflicting decisions.
[00:07:18] Piers Clark: Excellent. Marcus, I'd like us to look a little at the background because there was lots of talk about how rules and regulations around water quality might change after Brexit.
[00:07:27] Piers Clark: Have you seen any of that?
[00:07:29] Marcus Rink: No is probably the answer. The point at which we exited Europe meant that we didn't transpose the Drinking Water Directive that was laid in 20 20. And so consequently, we've stayed with the original regulations. So not much has changed in terms of regulation in that respect.
[00:07:48] Marcus Rink: That has allowed us to in some ways be a little bit more agile in the way that we've applied things. So, the best example here is Europe brought in regulation around 20 PFAS and that was in the Drinking Water Directive. Because we haven't transposed the Drinking Water Directive, there is no regulation, no statutory parameters for PFAS in our regulation.
[00:08:10] Marcus Rink: And to manage that, we've used guidance to direct companies. Now, that has allowed us to tailor that specifically to England and Wales in terms of which PFAS we think are important and recommending for instance, the action that companies should take to put a strategic plan in place, a systematic strategic plan.
[00:08:31] Marcus Rink: So there are advantages, and there are disadvantages in that, some of the regulations that might have been helpful haven't come across. But in not bringing it across, that's allowed us some flexibility to get some things done.
[00:08:44] Piers Clark: You're not suggesting that we're less stringent, it's more that we're more tailored and more appropriate with our regulations.
[00:08:51] Marcus Rink: In the specific instance of PFAS, I would argue that because we've been more agile that means that we've been able to respond a lot quicker.
[00:08:59] Marcus Rink: That means that the water supply that we have is likely to be in a much better place than Europe is currently in respect to PFAS. That doesn't mean that they won't catch up, if you like, but that has given us a couple of years, a head start in that respect.
[00:09:16] Piers Clark: Yeah, it's a good place to be.
[00:09:17] Piers Clark: Well, let's talk about innovation in the sector. Part of the reason I reached out to you was I was talking with a supplier who was singing your praises about the work you've done in driving innovation forward on monitoring and regulatory innovation.
[00:09:32] Piers Clark: Can you share a bit about your approach there?
[00:09:35] Marcus Rink: I'm a keen advocate of innovation, and sometimes regulations can stem that or it can suppress some of the innovations.
[00:09:43] Marcus Rink: And one of the good examples there, I think, is for instance, where we carry out microbiological analysis so that we can use newer technology. So that might be flow cytometry in service reservoirs to identify changes in the microbial population.
[00:09:59] Marcus Rink: It comes back to that regulatory argument, doesn't it?, where we're putting guidance or we're allowing companies to flex to come up with innovative ideas to deal with real-life problems.
[00:10:10] Piers Clark: For people who maybe don't know flow cytometry, the beauty of this is it moves us away from taking a sample, sending it to the lab, waiting five days to get a result, and then we find that we'd had some sort of contamination.
[00:10:21] Piers Clark: Flow cytometry would enable us to have almost real time monitoring of microbial contamination.
[00:10:26] Piers Clark: Am I correct?
[00:10:27] Marcus Rink: Yeah. So if we have real time monitoring within that service reservoir, maybe if we have continuous monitoring, then that will allow companies to take action more quickly.
[00:10:37] Marcus Rink: Now, the reason why this works for us is because we have moved our regulatory perspective into a risk basis. So what we're looking for the company to do is to identify risks, put measures in place that mitigate those risks.
[00:10:53] Marcus Rink: So that risk-based regulation is what's driving that innovation because what we're saying is you can use other methodologies to mitigate risks.
[00:11:02] Piers Clark: Excellent. And looking forward, what innovations do you see in the DWI horizon scan?
[00:11:09] Piers Clark: The things that you're looking at that you're like, "Okay, in 20 years' time, this is gonna be standard practice," whereas today it's a bit new?
[00:11:15] Marcus Rink: We're certainly getting into water reuse and understanding what that means. And I think given the fact that we're in a drier climate , it's really important that we allow innovation in water reuse. So, advanced membranes, reverse osmosis, ceramic membranes, carbon membranes even.
[00:11:33] Marcus Rink: So we'd be quite interested in looking at innovation that helps that pathway into using water that would otherwise be lost into the environment or washed out to sea.
[00:11:43] Marcus Rink: Also we're quite keen on looking at methodologies around sufficiency. So, it isn't just about reuse, but it's the way that we connect systems, whether that be reused to the environment or pipe to pipe systems.
[00:11:59] Piers Clark: Excellent. Marcus, it's wonderful connecting with you, 'cause we normally interview utility chief execs, and they come with a very different perspective to that with you as a regulator. And a regulator who's got a researchy background which was just becoming very relevant there as you were talking around the innovations.
[00:12:14] Piers Clark: You've got a policeman role, but a policeman role that recognizes that there needs to be technical and scientific innovation.
[00:12:21] Marcus Rink: We've gotta have that research to underpin those decisions, and the better your research is, the better the decisions. The better the decisions, the better the regulation.
[00:12:31] Marcus Rink: So you shouldn't be just turning around and saying, "Regulation says no." What you should be saying is, "What is it that makes it workable? How do we make this work?" and "what research do we need to make that work?" So whether it be in resilience, whether it be sufficiency, whether it be in reuse, whether it be instrumentation, whether it be new treatment systems and new treatment streams, as well as new materials.
[00:12:58] Piers Clark: Excellent. It's a good answer, that one. Marcus, we're running out of time now.
[00:13:02] Piers Clark: And we always like to finish by asking the question, if you could go back 30, 40 years and talk to a young Marcus Rink, what would you say to yourself?
[00:13:11] Piers Clark: What advice would you give your younger self?
[00:13:13] Marcus Rink: What I would say is if you have a specific idea of where you're going to be or what role you're going to do, don't be wedded to it.
[00:13:23] Marcus Rink: Because the reality is you sometimes don't understand your own strengths and talents. I had no idea all those years ago that I would end up as the chief inspector. In fact, I didn't even know the position existed. It really wasn't planned.
[00:13:40] Marcus Rink: But the biggest thing that I found that really helped me is the people you meet who are genuinely trying to help you. So the people who will take the time to teach you and give you their knowledge.
[00:13:53] Marcus Rink: So the one thing I would say to my younger self is learn, listen to people, and then when you have that knowledge, share that to other people and make those people better. They ultimately will invest in future generations, and we make the future better for ourselves.
[00:14:10] Piers Clark: You have been listening to The Exec Exchange with me, Piers Clark, and my guest today has been Dr. Marcus Rink, the Chief Inspector at the DWI, the Drinking Water Inspectorate here in the UK.
[00:14:23] Piers Clark: Thank you to our sponsors, and until next time, keep asking questions, keep sharing, and keep safe.