Co-producing research with academics and industry to create a more resilient UK water sector

• Main Authors: Kate Baker, Sarah Ward, Briony Turner, James Webber, Chris Sweetapple, Peter F. Drake, David Thomas, Peter Melville-Shreeve, Guangtao Fu, Stephanie Cherington-Rimmell, Raziyeh Farmani, David Butler
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: UCL Press 2020-08-01
• Series: Research for All
• Online Access: https://ucl.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14324/RFA.04.2.02

Societal, economic and environmental impact generated by academic research is a key focus of publicly funded research in the UK. Drawing on experiences from the Safe & SuRe project, a five-year research project that was co-produced with industry, this paper explores the challenges, learnings and benefits of co-producing research with academics and practitioners to create a more resilient UK water sector. Three aspects of the project are explored in detail: the use of a steering group, co-developing research intensively with a water company, and co-dissemination industry-facing events. Emerging themes include: (1) benefits of the industry steering group to develop working relationships and trust among the group; (2) increased dialogue and sharing of information between industry and academics going beyond the one-way communication more commonly reported by STEM academics; and (3) the value of co-disseminating research to maintain and engage new connections and spark new research questions.