Veolia’s opportunity

Veolia’s terrible earnings results, coming on the back on substantial write-downs, have caused their share price to plunge again, and at time of writing their share price is down close to 50% over a year, and 71% over five years. This is an opportunity for those pushing for a change of approach in the business [...]

Build global talent shortage into planning

The global water talent market looks increasingly constrained, with a shortage of mid-level talent even in countries with high levels of unemployment. I cannot emphasise enough that you should build high salaries and talent-shortages into your business planning. We are observing the most severe talent shortages in Brazil and China, where it is very difficult for global [...]

China and Point-Of-Use

Could China be bypassing the centralised potable water treatment paradigm and skipping straight to POU? I recently attended Aquatech China in Shanghai, the biggest water technology trade show in China. There were hundreds of Chinese membrane manufactures present, with both high-pressure and low-pressure membrane solutions.  Most were targeting the domestic market, and it was clear [...]

Water Leadership – the H2Otalent doctrine

The global water industry is going through a transition. A transition from  an industry focused on the incremental improvement of a century-old water management paradigm, to an adaptive industry that can manage the rapid and dramatic changes occuring  in climate, technology and society. Incremental improvement and rapid adaption require very different leadership approaches, and this has created  a leadership deficit throughout the [...]

Japan Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami

The scale of the disaster caused by the Tsunami in Japan last week must be unprecedented in modern times. It is absolutely chilling. As a former long term resident of Japan I have been getting most of my fine-grain news from the facebook updates of friends on the ground in Tokyo and in Chiba and Ibaraki [...]

China and the Global Water Talent Market

In spite of the ongoing rocky global financial situation, H2Otalent has been busy, and the fact that I have not posted to this blog for six months (sorry!) is a good indicator of this. We can largely thank China for this…as a resources industry exposed Asia-Pacific based business we are inside the China growth bubble. [...]

Water management crisis – victims of our own success

Watching a video on Circle of Blue recently, one comment jumped out at me. Paul Reiter, Executive Director of the IWA made the point that in industrialised countries, engineers have been so successful in solving two of the main water issues (providing potable water to the home and removing wastewater from the home), that water is no longer front-of-mind for [...]

Impact of drought on sewer/wastewater treatment

Australia has been very successful in driving down potable water consumption through education, restrictions,  increasing household efficiency. As a consequence, there has been a substantial change in quantity of water in sewers and the concentration of influent into treatment plants. This has all sorts of implications for sewer design and operation as well as treatment [...]

Corporate water risk management

I am utterly convinced that one of the more interesting growth areas for employment of water professionals is in corporate risk management. Almost every manufacturing and agricultural process requires water, and any firm in the business of making or selling things will find water inputs at some stage of their supply chain. Since most power stations are [...]

And the winner is – Pipes (and pumps)

In my view, the biggest winner from climate change and water scarcity will be the pipe industry. It is no secret that there is a global crises in agricultural water supplies which could threaten world food supplies in the not so distant future. The good news is that agricultural water use is so inefficient that [...]

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