There are many reasons for a company to consider a decision to switch business water supplier. The price you pay is an obvious one, but the quality of service is also very important. This second consideration is not a nebulous thing, but can be thought of in terms of several different elements:
- Reliable supplies that do not get cut off or run out
- Good maintenance to prevent leakage
- A swift response when problems arise
- A proactive approach to helping you manage water resources
The first three of these may be the kind of issues you think about most – and for good reasons. As a business water user, you don’t want supplies to be cut off, as this can damage your business, whether it is preventing you from watering sports pitches in dry weather or stopping you from making water-based products, such as drinks.
Issues of maintenance and a swift response to problems are closely related to this, not least if issues arise, such as contaminants getting into the water.
How Would Your Business Be Impacted By A ‘Boil Water’ Order?
Businesses are certainly right to be concerned about such issues. Nobody would want to face the situation that domestic customers have been hit by in Kent, for example. Issues with the Pembury Water Treatment plant that caused it to shut down had a knock-on effect as water pressure fell in the Tunbridge Wells area on November 29th.
‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ may have been an apt description of many householders with what has come out of their taps since then. South East Water has issued a notice to boil water before using it, although, no doubt to much confusion, it has said the water is “chemically safe” despite a “potential fault in the final disinfection process”.
It might be argued that this is simply a precaution, but while this is a potential inconvenience for householders, it could be something much worse for commercial providers, for whom boiling large quantities of water would be a very impractical or at least energy-intensive thing to do, as well as taking up a lot of time. All this could be highly disruptive.
Can You Get Help To Prepare For Droughts?
As well as any incident that leads to a lack of safe, clean water, there may be issues of there being no water at all. This spectre started to loom large in parts of the country during the summer, although a distinctly wet autumn has eased such concerns in most areas (though not yet all).
Nonetheless, this could be a significant problem in future years as water demand rises and the climate changes.
This raises a further question about water suppliers. Can they go beyond merely ensuring that routine supplies send clean water through the pipes day by day and help you to save or even store water to help deal with a crisis?
A good example of this would be if a water supplier helped your company with large storage tanks in which auxiliary supplies could be kept. Another step would be to help you establish a well from which supplies could be drawn.
This is not always a straightforward process, however. A well may be great for a golf club that can always draw on supplies to water the greens even in a hot, dry summer. However, a brewery may need specialised filters to deal with any undesired mineral elements in well water that might prove a barrier to producing pleasant beer.
Other steps a water company might take would be to help you conserve water simply by wasting less. That may mean changes to your factory infrastructure to reduce spillages, or meters to help you judge more accurately how much water you are using so that you can limit it to a set planned amount, thus saving on limited resources.
What Can A Good Business Water Supplier Offer?
Whichever of these steps a water company helps you to take (or even a combination of them), doing so could go a long way to helping ensure you always have a reliable water supply.
This means if the reservoirs are running low, there is a major problem with a water pipeline, or there has been a potential pollution incident, you will have the means to carry on operating normally.
None of this means you shouldn’t look at issues like price when choosing or potentially changing your business water supplier, but value for money is a matter that should always be taken into account.
If you do decide to change, our switching service can make the whole process swift, simple and easy, so you should never be put off doing so by any thought that it might be an awkward or tricky thing to do. We can make sure it isn’t.
