Interim Specialist RCV Allocation

Our requirements:

We expect that we will need to carry out significant work on accounting separation to support the potential proposed reforms under Water 2020. Further, because of the time constraints, we expect that a lot of this work would potentially need to be carried out in 2016 and we need to get going on that now. We are recruiting a small team to undertake this work and whilst we go through the recruitment process we are looking to procure an interim Principal so that we can get started before the new team is in place.

The first task of the interim Principal will be to review our initial plan and suggest improvements to help finalise it. This will take about 2 weeks.

For the remainder of the assignment, the interim Principal will be responsible for and manage the accounting separation work-stream, supporting the Director of Accounting. To provide further explanation of what this involves, we set out below the scope of the permanent Principal role. Obviously, we only expect the interim to cover the first three months of this. What is described below covers the next one to two years.

The interim role is expected to be largely internally facing, rather than external stakeholder facing. The interim will need to be adaptable, fitting in around the Director of Accounting and other members of the team, to strengthen with expertise/ experience and to support as needed.

The role and the Water 2020 Programme:

As part of the Water 2020 program, this role will be responsible for delivery of the best possible quality cost and asset data into the next price review. We will consult on our proposals for Water 2020 in December 2015. Depending on the outcome of this consultation, we may potentially need the data to underpin the establishment of separate controls for parts of the wholesale value chain such as sludge and water resources. In this case, we would also need to refine and develop the reporting of separate cost and asset data (accounting separation) for these markets, as well as improving the granularity of cost information and cost drivers within these markets. We will also look to develop the consistency of reporting across the 18 water and sewage companies, supporting our comparative benchmarking and assessment of efficiency.

Job purpose:

The successful candidate will be responsible for leading or contributing to specific projects within Water 2020 programme (as described above).

More specifically, the role will include leading work on the balance of risk, and develop policy to feed into the May 2016 Water 2020 consultation document.

Key responsibilities within the programme:

The successful candidate will work closely with Ofwat staff within Risk & Reward work-stream, which looks at how we can ensure that companies are incentivised to deliver customer value and at the same time are fairly rewarded for past and future investments.