en.Wedoany.com Reported - Anglian Water has partnered with root cause analysis (RCA) experts What Caused This to enhance organizational learning and create a more connected approach to investigation learning through this project.
In large, complex organizations, operational, environmental, and asset management teams often face similar challenges from different perspectives, but key insights are frequently confined to individual teams or reports, limiting their potential to drive broader improvements. For water companies, building organizational learning capability is as important as conducting investigations themselves. Anglian Water's collaboration with What Caused This focuses on strengthening RCA capabilities to address this challenge.
RCA activities in many large organizations are managed through spreadsheets, reports, and team-specific processes scattered across departments, making it difficult to connect learning from investigations across the organization. Information is stored in different teams and systems, making it harder to identify duplicate causes, recognize common themes, and understand emerging risks and improvement opportunities. Recognizing the need for a more connected approach to investigation learning, Anglian Water partnered with What Caused This to explore how knowledge and insights could be shared more effectively across the business.
The project focused on understanding how investigations are conducted across different teams, how learning is captured, and how valuable insights can be shared more effectively. The two organizations worked closely together, combining operational experience, investigation expertise, and user feedback to shape an approach that reflects the realities of day-to-day operations. The result is a digital RCA platform that supports individual investigations while strengthening organizational learning across operational, environmental, and asset teams. This collaborative approach ensures the solution aligns with existing workflows and creates a consistent framework for capturing, analyzing, and sharing investigation learning.
By centralizing investigations on a single platform, Anglian Water has improved visibility into incident causes, common themes, and systemic risks. Investigation findings can be reviewed and compared more consistently, helping teams identify preventive measures and opportunities for continuous improvement. The platform also supports a more transparent, evidence-based approach to RCA, addressing consistency challenges while reducing the administrative burden of managing investigations across multiple systems and formats.
Molly Bartlett, Intervention Optimization Lead for Anglian Water's Pollution Response Team, said: "Working with What Caused This has been a very positive experience. This partnership has allowed us to share operational knowledge, challenge existing approaches, and develop a more connected way of learning from incidents across the organization. It has been invaluable to work with a team that understands both the technical and human aspects of RCA."
The new approach also supports faster, more evidence-based investigations, enabling teams to collaborate easily, focus less on administration, and more on understanding why incidents occurred and how to prevent them. It strengthens organizational learning by making investigation insights more accessible, shareable, and applicable across the business. Jonathan Batchelor, CEO of What Caused This, said: "The collaboration with Anglian Water has been incredibly valuable. Their openness to collaboration and continuous improvement has created an environment where shared operational knowledge and practical experience can directly influence the platform's evolution. Together, we are helping to build a stronger, more connected approach to RCA in the water industry." By connecting investigation activities, lessons learned, and improvement actions on a single platform, the two companies have laid a stronger foundation for preventive measures, helping teams identify opportunities to improve operational performance and environmental outcomes.
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