Isle’s NRW Reduction Investment Plan forecasts the costs, benefits and staffing needs for TasWater’s Water Efficiency Program (WEP).
TasWater networks span large geographic areas, diverse topography, and ageing infrastructure. While the state is often perceived as water-secure, leakage and system losses reduce available supply, increase operating costs, and place additional pressure on treatment and distribution assets. As infrastructure ages and performance expectations rise, improving network efficiency has become an operational and financial priority.
Following an Isle-led Non-Revenue Water (NRW) review, TasWater sought to move from diagnostic insight to structured delivery. The review identified key leakage drivers, capability gaps, and performance improvement opportunities across the network.
TasWater wanted to translate these findings into a structured program of works, governed by a clear, prioritised, and defensible investment roadmap, one that balanced cost, benefit, and delivery capacity over the medium term.
Building on the review, Isle developed a six-year NRW Reduction Investment Plan and supporting business case, outlining $171 million of targeted activities to reduce NRW and improve reporting accuracy, delivering approximately 39 GL in water savings. Our team modelled costs, quantified benefits, assessed staffing and capability requirements, and defined a phased implementation pathway, providing TasWater with a clear, evidence-based roadmap to embed sustainable performance improvement across its network.
Isle continues to support the implementation of several streams of work, track outcomes over time and refine theWater Efficiency Program (WEP).
Benefits of Approach/Innovation
- Reduces water loss: The program targets a 39GL reduction in NRW over the six-year uplift period, providing a clear, quantified pathway to improve network performance and reach a sustainable level of water efficiency.
- Capability uplift: The WEP improves TasWater’s capability in NRW governance, measurement, monitoring and reporting.
- Strengthens investment decisions: The business case evaluates three delivery options, assessing NRW impact, TOTEX, achievability, and delivery risk to identify the most robust and defensible approach.
- Enables smarter targeting: Initial investment focuses on enabling works that improve data quality and system insight, supporting more precise and cost-effective reduction activities in later years.
- Builds adaptive delivery: A phased investment approach allows annual performance reviews, enabling program and budget adjustments to ensure funding and resourcing remain aligned with target outcomes.
- Improves financial transparency: The Investment plan provides a detailed CAPEX, OPEX, and TOTEX breakdown in present and real future values across each year and pricing period, supporting clear reporting and regulatory confidence.
Specialist Services Involved
- NRW program design: Our expertise defined the optimal sequencing of enabling and reduction activities, quantifying benefits for each intervention on a quarterly basis to maximise impact and delivery confidence.
- Investment modelling: We developed a comprehensive Investment Plan detailing OPEX, CAPEX, NRW benefits, and FTE requirements across six workstreams and eighteen sub-streams, providing full cost and resource visibility.
- Board-level business case: We produced a Board-ready business case including financial modelling, risk assessment, options analysis, implementation approach, and clear recommendations to support informed decision-making.
- Executive alignment: We presented outputs to the Chief Financial Officer, General Manager of Sustainable Infrastructure Services, and the full executive team, ensuring leadership understanding, challenge, and endorsement of the program direction.
Outcomes
- Program approval: The first year (FY2026) of the Investment Plan received formal approval, securing the planned CAPEX and OPEX uplift to commence delivery.
- Secured water savings: Achievement of target NRW reduction levels will deliver sustained savings of 12.7 GL of water per year, strengthening long-term supply efficiency.
- Positive financial return: The investment plan is forecast to generate approximately $3.7m in net savings annually, with sustained NRW benefits outweighing ongoing program costs.
- Early performance gains: NRW reduced from 25.1% to 21.3% in the first year of the Water Efficiency Program, demonstrating measurable progress and validating the phased investment approach.
Key contact:
For enquiries and further information, please contact Paul Harris, Global Head for Business Optimisation Services at Isle Utilities.