In our latest interview, we speak with Rachel Pether, Binnies’ Head of Strategic Resource Options
1. You oversee water services and the SRO programme at Binnies — what does that actually look like day to day?
My reservoir background as an All Reservoirs Panel Engineer naturally gives me a particular interest in large storage schemes, but I now work across all SRO projects — transfers, reservoirs, water reuse, desalination — ensuring teams have clarity on risks, data, environmental pathways, and regulatory drivers.
Binnies works from early strategic planning and feasibility, through environmental assessment, planning, design and constructability, and ultimately delivery and commissioning phases. This whole‑lifecycle involvement is reflected in our work on schemes like the Thames to Southern Transfer (T2ST), where our services span planning, design, environmental assessment, ground investigation, and constructability support.
2. From your perspective, what’s the single biggest risk to long‑term water resilience in the UK?
The biggest risk is delay — in planning, in consenting, in securing investment, and in getting major supply schemes to construction. Climate pressures and demand growth are moving faster than our infrastructure pipelines. Even projects with strong technical backing can be held up by lengthy decision cycles. With the SRO programme representing a significant long term investment the stakes of losing time are high.
3. Strategic Resource Options are central to future supply — where are we seeing real momentum, and where is progress slow?
Momentum is strongest where there is clear regional collaboration, stable governance, and well‑defined environmental assessments — for example, on new reservoir schemes such as the White Horse Reservoir, where our JV work is helping accelerate planning and design maturity.
Progress tends to be slower for energy‑intensive or regulatory‑dependent options like desalination or water reuse, where permitting routes or environmental baselines are still evolving. Anything requiring novel planning pathways or new market mechanisms naturally moves at a more cautious pace.
4. There’s often tension between urgency and affordability — how should the sector be navigating that balance?
We have to frame affordability not just as cost today, but as the cost of inaction. Structuring options so they can be modular, scalable, or phased allows us to invest adaptively rather than over‑commit too early.
This is also where robust asset management, digital insight, and strong constructability thinking play a huge role. Binnies’ asset management services adopt a full lifecycle approach, combining strategy, engineering, data and technology to help clients optimise investments and manage risks. Equally, our constructability expertise ensures that proposed solutions are practical, efficient and buildable from day one — reducing delivery risk, identifying opportunities for simplification, and ensuring capital solutions can be delivered safely, quickly and economically.
5. How should companies be thinking differently about water resources planning compared to five or ten years ago?
Planning has shifted from a company‑centric view to a system‑wide one: regional integration, cross‑company schemes, broader climate scenarios, and a much deeper emphasis on environmental outcomes.
6. What role should partnerships play in unlocking water resources at scale?
Partnerships are fundamental. The scale and complexity of the SRO portfolio means no organisation can deliver alone. Cross‑company collaboration, like the two JVs that Binnies has formed separately with Arup and GHD, demonstrate how combining complementary expertise accelerates progress and brings stronger environmental and engineering assurance.
The Regulator’s Alliance for Progressing Infrastructure Development (RAPID) is also a critical partnership as the collaborative regulatory body overseeing the SRO gateways. Its role in bringing regulators together ensures that options are progressed efficiently, risks are surfaced early, and schemes move through approvals in a coordinated way.
Beyond water companies and regulators, partnerships with environment agencies, agriculture, local authorities and digital technology partners add resilience, land access and innovation that wouldn’t be achievable in silos. Together, these collaborations create a more integrated, efficient and future‑proofed approach to developing water resources at scale.
7. What drew you into water resources as a career focus?
Originally, it was reservoirs. As an All Reservoirs Panel Engineer, I loved the complexity and the independent judgement required to design, assess, and safeguard such critical assets. Reservoirs sit at the intersection of so many engineering disciplines as well as the environment and public safety — and that blend of disciplines is compelling.
Over time, and in my wider leadership role at Binnies, that passion naturally broadened into other complex water resource projects, where the same combination of technical depth and societal value applies at scale.
8. How do you stay optimistic working on such long‑term, complex challenges?
Because the work matters — and because I see real progress every day. Even when milestones aren’t visible publicly, every environmental assessment, design iteration, and modelling improvement moves us closer to resilient infrastructure.
9. One word to describe the future of UK water resources?
Transformational.
10. What should Water Watch readers be paying much closer attention to over the next 12 months?
Over the next year, the single biggest determinant of whether the SRO portfolio advances at pace will be the evolution of planning and environmental consenting frameworks. The sector is still grappling with lengthy Development Consent Order (DCO) timelines, complex environmental assessments, and overlapping requirements across local and national regulators. Major schemes require highly coordinated, multi‑stage approvals. Reforms aimed at streamlining these processes could significantly reduce delay risk.
Another major shift will come from the maturing of the competitive delivery frameworks. Direct Procurement for Customers (DPC) invites long‑term private infrastructure investors and delivery consortia to take on major projects, while Strategic Infrastructure Provider (SIPR) goes further by defining a new class of organisations dedicated to delivering nationally significant water infrastructure. For the SROs, this will influence:
- Deliverability — competition could bring in organisations with strong megaproject experience, accelerating timelines and enabling innovation in design, construction and asset management.
- Investor appetite — confidence will depend on how clearly risk allocation, regulatory returns, permitting responsibilities and long‑term revenue structures are defined.
- Market readiness — bidders will expect robust early‑stage technical work, strong environmental evidence, and clear strategic intent — all areas where Binnies’ whole‑lifecycle capabilities, from planning to constructability, are already geared to support.
As these models develop, water companies will need to ensure their SRO schemes are “market‑shaped”: technically mature, environmentally credible, digitally assured, and attractive to investors with long‑term capital.