Supporting the last mile of resilience

Supporting the last mile of resilience – know your weakness and build your strength

Water is not optional for industry – when the water stops, business stops.

But with water supplies facing growing challenges in the UK and beyond – the big question is what happens when supplies fail and what does true resilience mean?

In the UK we are seeing more water outages – the risk dial is moving from a vague threat to a tangible concern. Volatility can stem from climate change, decades of under investment in critical infrastructure and regulatory changes.

At the Economist Impact Water Summit last week, our Chief Executive Adam Johnson, spoke on the panel “Designing for disruption, effective strategies for water resilience” to make a simple point; resilience is not a policy statement – it’s an operating model.

And for many organisations, the biggest gap is in what we call the last mile of resilience: the site-level capability to mobilise, sustain minimum operations and recover predictably when the mains can’t be relied on.

Water Direct supports that last mile every day – working with healthcare, manufacturing, data centres, construction and estates teams when water is needed urgently, in bulk, and with clear controls. Each sector’s exposure is different. But the failure pattern is often the same: businesses may have risk awareness, yet lack clarity on tolerances, decision rights, and realistic mobilisation timelines.

The one thing that doesn’t change, whichever sector you are in, is that resilience is about continuity. If you want to turn “water risk” into continuity capability, leadership teams need answers to a few practical questions:

• How long can your business last without water?
• Who in your organisation will take the lead when crisis hits?
• What is the first area to be impacted?
• How quickly can you react?
• How quickly can you recover?

A clear board-ready view of where water can hurt you most and how quickly is the first step to creating a ready response that can be flexed to each situation, ensuring you’re buying yourself valuable time and not left considering what you need to do when the crisis unfolds.

Resilience is about having a structured playbook, turning the spotlight on site vulnerabilities, knowing how much water you will need to keep operating and being confident that you have an assured response in place.

That’s the gap WaterTight is designed to close, offering resilience as a service model for water-critical sites. The outcome is simple: when disruption happens, you’re not improvising—you’re executing a plan, with assured support to keep operations running and recovery predictable

Find out more about how WaterTight can support your organisation Watertight Service for Emergency Supply | Water Direct UK