Asset Management Maturity Assessment (AMMA)

Overview

Awarded contract following further-competition against the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) RM6309 Management Consultancy Framework Four (MCF4) - Lot 2: Strategy & Policy. As Ofwat's Engineering and Asset Management (EAM) Team, we want to advance asset management within the water sector to promote optimised decision making, driving sustainable performance and outcomes. As part of this vision, we will deliver the Asset Management Maturity Assessment (AMMA) in 2026, to promote the value of asset management. The AMMA was last delivered in 2021 as a co-creation with water companies to wide success. Since that time, water companies have continued to undertake assessments of their asset management maturity, however this is done on an individual, ad-hoc basis using varying methodologies. The 2026 edition seeks to understand the current Asset Management landscape, uncover trends and publish insights and recommendations to improve. Rather than using the bespoke maturity questions of the 2021 AMMA, the project will leverage the industry standard Institute of Asset Management's (IAM) Self-Assessment Methodology (SAM2025, Anatomy edition). While water companies see benefit in undertaking their own, individually verified maturity assessments, the AMMA will provide additional value in sector-wide analysis and sharing findings across the sector. It will give an early indication of water companies' compliance against our new licence condition for asset management competency. We see the 2026 AMMA not only as a way to understand how the sector is progressing in its asset management maturity, but also an opportunity to compare against the water industry internationally, and wider asset intensive sectors such as Energy and Transport. Through the AMMA, we want to highlight areas of good practice and define what higher maturity looks like specific to the water sector. We intend to re-tender the AMMA in the second year of each Asset Management Period (once every five years). The delivery of future AMMAs will fall under the responsibility of the new regulator for water, and come under the scope of the New Vision for Water. The bidder will act as the independent assurer to ensure companies' self-assessed asset management maturity is accurate and reflects best practice methodologies. The Review and Reporting package shall comprise the following tasks: - Project management - Review draft submissions - Verification sessions with water companies - Analysis of final submissions - Reporting: - One report per company - One sector-wide Insights and Recommendations report - Any other tasks the bidder deems relevant, with Ofwat's prior approval, for the successful delivery of the project.