An Innovation "Refresh" at DC Water: History, Drivers, and the Path Forward

BACKGROUND DC Water is an independent water utility providing drinking water to 700,000 residents in the District of Columbia and wastewater collection and treatment services to 2.4 million residents in the greater Washington, DC area, including Virginia and Maryland. DC Water was created as an independent authority of the District of Columbia in 1996, previously operating as the Water and Sewer Utility Administration under the city's Department of Public Works. DC Water operates the world's largest advanced wastewater treatment plant, Blue Plains. This treatment plant is the largest point source discharge in the Chesapeake Bay watershed which stretches from New York state to southern Virginia. Blue Plains treats over 300 million gallons per day of wastewater to very low discharge standards and has incorporated approximately $1B in treatment infrastructure improvements to reduce nutrient loads to the Bay. Blue Plains is also the largest consumer of electricity in the District. As such, it has been important for DC Water to apply new and innovative approaches to meet our discharge permit; minimize adverse environmental impacts of our operations; and minimize rate increases to support the infrastructure improvements and other regulatory and legal mandates. In 2013, DC Water created a new position, Innovation Chief, perhaps the first such role in the municipal water sector. This position grew out of DC Water's Research and Development (R&D) program to support process upgrades at Blue Plains. The role expanded DC Water's innovation program and led to the generation of multiple patents, mostly for wastewater treatment processes and technologies. It also expanded DC Water's innovation ecosystem with academics, manufacturers, and consulting partners on local, national, and international scales. This R&D program continues today with a focus on continually evolving treatment challenges. DRIVERS FOR CHANGE DC Water's emergence as an independent authority in 1996, and the associated cultural transitions, continues to this day. The Authority continues to evolve with organizational and leadership changes. The majority of the recently established Senior Executive Team importantly brings experience from outside the water sector to their leadership roles. This reflects leadership's interest in shifting the organizational mindset from a municipal department to one that brings the best practices of the corporate world to address the challenges of an independent water utility. Part of this shift includes the ongoing need to break down organizational silos and cross-pollinate ideas and concepts across the enterprise. There are approximately 1100 employees at DC Water at facilities spread across the District. Leadership recognized that while innovation was thriving at Blue Plains via the R&D program, there was not an embedded culture of innovation that existed across the enterprise. A culture that cultivated and encouraged innovative ideas up through the organization was needed. Innovation in every department, whether it be wastewater treatment, water distribution, finance, customer service, human resources, fleet, or pumping operations, was needed. A governing structure that applied a consistent approach to innovative ideas was needed. A program that highlighted innovators and sparked diverse input was needed. With this understanding of a need for change, against a backdrop of increasing rates; affordability challenges; aging infrastructure; Consent Decree and regulatory compliance needs; and a rapidly changing workforce; DC Water embarked on an Innovation 'refresh' in 2020 to: 1.Redefine and strengthen the innovation process for added benefit to its ratepayers 2.Provide superior service to our workforce and communities 3.Position the Innovation Program as a key enabler 4.Inspire a culture of innovation across the enterprise THE INNOVATION 'REFRESH' Over a ten-week period in fall 2020, DC Water staff worked with two external consultants to provide leading-edge perspectives on innovation from outside the water sector and best practices from global water sector leaders. The process included a 'current state' analysis with a dozen design thinking workshops with participants including DC Water's Senior Executive Team, an Innovation Working Group with representatives from every department in the utility, input from the Board of Directors, and key external stakeholders. This analysis resulted in ten key opportunities for DC Water in our innovation refresh: 1.Achieve vision and value clarity for innovation 2.Present sustainability in three key forms 3.Create an inclusive and equitable culture 4.Foster innovative mindsets and engage employees 5.Utilize innovation to tackle the basics 6.Break down silos to leverage existing talent and resources 7.Leverage human-centered design 8.Make data-driven decisions to drive innovation 9.Build structured methodology and governance 10.Engage partners across the innovation ecosystem Building on these opportunities, the Working Group continued to engage to co-create a new operating model for innovation at DC Water. This included an Innovation Hub operating structure, governance, KPIs, and an innovation process for 'use cases,' or innovative ideas. The Innovation Hub (Fig. 1) was designed to first focus on two key capabilities to support innovation at DC Water: data analytics (data engineers, analytics, visualization, etc.) and design (service design, visual design, user interface/user experience), etc.) The innovation process builds on traditional stage-gate approaches with five steps in the process: idea intake, staffing, project planning, project execution, and scaling. The output from this ten-week engagement was the innovation strategy and operating model, including a timeline and budget for mobilization, program launch, and scaling up both the Innovation Hub and a culture of innovation across DC Water. This process started with the hiring of a dedicated Innovation Director in July 2021 and initiating efforts to mobilize, launch, and implement DC Water's new innovation strategy. THE PATH FORWARD Efforts are underway to bring DC Water's enterprise-wide innovation program to life. Preliminary milestones include: 1)A cross-functional team of internal Innovation Champions. As a functioning team that spans across DC Water, these Champions engage with employees, encourage participation, and communicate innovation activities so that everyone is included 2)A functional Senior Executive Team (SET) comprised of the CEO and direct reports as executive sponsors to both the overall innovation program and projects that get authorized for development 3)An automated idea capture tool to allow for crowdsourcing of ideas to key problem areas across DC Water's organizational siloes and beyond to include business partners, universities, and industry vendors. Plans are to implement and use this new capability to engage employees in idea sharing tied to innovation challenges. The aim is to increase employee engagement in innovation activity through 'gamifying' the idea capture process. 4)A quick win of our first innovation 'use case' to go through the five-step innovation process referenced above. We were able to swiftly go from problem to idea to proposed pitch to the SET for approval. This was a highly visible solar project aligned to two DC Water's strategic imperatives, sustainability and equity 5)An innovation pipeline of 40+ ideas, where new ways of applying technology to work activities can generate greater effectiveness, efficiency, and overall value to DC Water's ratepayers 6)A communications strategy across the workforce to give added visibility to and substance for DC Water's innovation program. This will be an ongoing effort designed to build momentum; encourage and recognize participation; and showcase success stories of what gets accomplished 7)An evolving ecosystem of external partners to collaborate in sharing ideas, building solutions, and learning from each other. The aim is to coordinate and work across the organization to benefit from these two-way partnerships with industry and academia Significant program progress is anticipated before UMC conference in February 2022 and the co-authors will update the audience on the lessons learned, recent accomplishments, and planned activities. The overall aim of DC Water's innovation program is to formulate and implement strategy for the entire organization-one that leads to innovative solutions consistent with its vision, mission, and core values. As DC Water continues move toward a more mature model from which to innovate, what gets done, how, and by whom will lead to a sustainable process of steady achievement, a process whereby key problems continue to get solved through a pipeline of ideas that can be prototyped, validated, and implemented with positive impact.