Risk map your water resilience

Risk map your water resilience – Shift from reactive to strategic to ensure business continuity

Preparedness is the foundation of resilience when water supplies fail.

While most organisations recognise that water disruption is costly, far fewer can quantify their exposure, model the operational impact, or demonstrate how quickly they could recover.

For water-dependent sectors, the financial consequences escalate rapidly with every hour offline. Estimated losses can reach:

• Manufacturing (including food, pharmaceutical and chemical production): £100,000–£200,000 per day in lost output
• Construction: £20,000–£50,000 per day
• Data centres: £5,000–£7,000 per minute

Against a backdrop of increasing supply interruptions, the exposure is real and the stakes are high – not just financially but also reputationally and in terms of how businesses meet their regulatory requirements.

What Are the Strategic Steps to Preparedness?

1. Quantify Operational Tolerance
Understand how long safe, compliant operations can continue without mains water.

2. Assess your speed of recovery
Map restoration timelines and mobilisation lead times. Identify single points of failure and stress-test assumptions.

3. Measure Organisational Capability
Evaluate governance, response capability and decision-making clarity.

4. Build a Robust Continuity Framework
A detailed, scenario-based continuity plan should define escalation pathways, communication protocols, regulatory obligations, and alternative supply activation triggers.

Risk-Mapping Your Readiness: From Reactive to Strategic

Risk-mapping your water resilience helps to anticipate disruption, mitigate impact, and protect operational integrity.
Key executive focus areas include:

Governance and ownership

• Is water resilience embedded at board or executive committee level?
• Are resilience KPIs tracked and reported?

Risk and dependency mapping

• Do you have full visibility of water-critical processes and interdependencies with a site level risk-register?

Alternative supply strategy

• How quickly can you secure alternative water?
• Do you have pre-contracted, assured capacity?

Testing and continuous improvement

• Do you conduct regular scenario testing, embedding lessons learned into planning cycles?

Calculate and Benchmark Your Preparedness
Water Direct’s Water Resilience Maturity Index (WRMI) is a free, structured self-assessment tool designed to quantify your organisation’s readiness in the event of a water interruption.
In just a few minutes, you can gain executive-level clarity on your resilience with targeted next steps to reduce exposure and protect operational continuity.

WaterTight
Our flagship WaterTight service offers a complete assured response including site-specific risk assessment, a tailored water resilience plan, reserved capacity and a guaranteed response in as little as four hours.
Find out more here: WaterTight Service for Emergency Supply | Water Direct UK