Project Methodology
The group began with a brainstorm session to identify areas and research that needed to be done to gain a concise understanding of renewable opportunities for water utilities and specifically Scottish Water. This generated several ideas over the course of a few weeks and the group narrowed it down to two based on their perceived importance, and opportunity for environmental improvement: Energy Storage related to WWTW and Energy Recovery harnessing dissipated energy lost within the water network. Each group member was tasked with conducting independent research on these ideas; working independently at this stage meant that group members were not able to bias each other in their research.
Subsequent weeks
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Upon conducting independent research, the group made the decision to move forward with the two fundamental areas identified. One of the main reasons for these choice’s was our discussions with representatives of Scottish water who helped guide our understanding of their current business pinch point related to their net zero route-map. This shows the value of the group independently researching the ideas as this could have been missed opportunity to gain more in depth understanding of a water utilities company. The gathering of information in this way meant that the group had confidence in the discussions to be taken forward for the project.
It was agreed that ‘Planner’ would be used to assign responsibility and timeframes to tasks (as in figure). The group agreed to work to the following principles that would add robustness:
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Group strives to work well together
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Group works at an appropriate pace
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Group demonstrates suitable task management
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The work is fairly contributed to
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Tasks follow SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound) principles
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Group members honour their assigned tasks
Group members’ views on adherence to these principles was discussed at subsequent zoom meetings for the preceding week at each group meeting. This allowed areas of alignment and misalignment to be identified and addressed if required.
The group identified key components of the project to be split into deliverables to act as reports that could be sent to Scottish Water for feedback and guidance.
Tasks were divided to align with group members’ particular interests; it was felt that this would make the assignment more enjoyable to work on and would result in a high-quality report. The group carried out brainstorming for appropriate parts of the project and subgroups were determined, described in the table.
An explanation of the deliverables and tasks was first decided to ensure the scope was clear to all group members before embarking on different components of the project. This would ensure that work carried out was relevant to the project – one of the SMART principles.
At each meeting, all group members and subgroups presented their work to obtain feedback and suggestions for improvement. The deliverables and presentations were populated as a shared document to allow all group members to critique, and it was made clear that each member is responsible for the project outcome and not just a subsection(s) of it. This prevented siloed working practices and promoted robustness in the writing.