“Ultimately, it’s about rebuilding trust — if technology helps, then it’s something to embrace”
Richard Warneford has spent his entire career in the water sector, rising to become Wastewater Director at Northumbrian Water, where he now leads a team of more than 600 people. Passionate about operations, innovation, and the people he works with, Warneford has become a driving force behind projects that push the boundaries of how water companies monitor and protect the environment. One such initiative is Smart Skies, Healthy Waters, an ambitious project that combines drone technology, mobile laboratories, and advanced modelling to transform how water quality is monitored in near real-time. In this interview with Smart Water Magazine, Richard discusses the origins of the project, its technical challenges, regulatory hurdles, and collaborative partnerships — and shares his wider vision for how data and innovation can reshape wastewater and environmental management for the future.
Could you share a little about your professional background and what motivates you as Wastewater Director at Northumbrian Water?
I’ve really been in the water sector all my life — “man and boy,” as I like to put it. I started straight from school, spent a few years working before going to university to study civil engineering, and I’m now a chartered civil engineer by background.
While I’ve got that technical foundation, I’ve always been much more interested in the operational side of the business than in design or construction alone. I like to see things working in practice, to get involved with operations, and to solve problems in real-time.
To meet goals for near-real-time water quality monitoring, we needed to do things differently; that’s how Smart Skies, Healthy Waters was born
Leadership is also central to what I do. I work with some incredible people — more than 600 across wastewater operations — and they are passionate about protecting the environment and serving customers. That motivates me every day.
There’s often negative press about water companies, but the colleagues I work with really care about the same things the public cares about: the health of our rivers, the quality of our coasts, and the communities we serve. That’s why I feel so strongly about demonstrating what we can achieve when we innovate and work together.
What inspired the Smart Skies, Healthy Waters project, and how did it get started?
The starting point was really a necessity. Regulators have been setting increasingly ambitious goals for near-real-time water quality monitoring. That’s easy to say, but very hard to do using traditional methods where someone drives to a site, dips a bottle in the water, and sends it to a lab.
We’ve been trialling drones that can fly offshore, lower a container into the water, and bring samples back for analysis
We realised that if we were going to meet these goals, we needed to do things differently. That’s how Smart Skies, Healthy Waters was born — through the idea that drones could collect samples offshore and bring them back for rapid analysis.
Northumbrian Water has a strong culture of innovation. Every year we run our Innovation Festival, where thousands of people from across the sector — regulators, customers, NGOs, start-ups, global companies — come together in design sprints to tackle tough problems. The idea for this project emerged from one of those sprints. Having all those voices in the room from the start meant we shaped a project that wasn’t just about what the utility wanted, but about what regulators, customers, and environmental groups needed too.
Could you give us an overview of Smart Skies, Healthy Waters — what it involves and what makes it different from traditional approaches to water quality monitoring?
At its heart, the project is about finding a faster, more flexible way of understanding water quality in real time. Traditionally, someone drives to a site, dips a bottle into the river or sea, and sends it off to a lab. It’s manual, it’s slow, and it only gives you information from a few fixed points close to the shoreline.
What Smart Skies, Healthy Waters does is take that process into the air. We’ve been trialling drones that can fly offshore, lower a container into the water, and bring samples back. The vision is that those drones dock at a mobile, containerised lab — what we call a “lab in a box” — where samples are analysed almost immediately, rather than days later.
Alongside that, we’re feeding the results into advanced modelling systems that tell us not just what the water quality is now, but how conditions are likely to evolve. Instead of relying on a limited set of data points, we’ll have a dynamic, near-real-time picture of what’s happening across our coastal waters.
That combination — drones, mobile labs, and modelling — is what makes it so different. It gives us agility, speed, and accuracy that we simply can’t achieve with traditional approaches.
What technical challenges have you faced with the project, and how are you addressing them?
Innovation always means hitting challenges, but I see those as opportunities. With drones, one of the first hurdles was simply how to collect a water sample offshore. Imagine a drone hovering in the wind, lowering a small bottle on a cable into the water — it sounds simple, but the reality is more complicated. We had to refine the technology to make it stable, lighter, and safe to operate. Connectivity was another issue: like mobile phones, one minute you have a strong signal, the next you don’t. We’ve solved this by building resilience into the system and using multiple networks.
The combination of drones, mobile labs, and modelling is what makes this project so different; it gives us agility, speed, and accuracy
The other big challenge is the “lab in a box”. Traditionally, samples go to fixed laboratories, but our vision is for containerised mobile labs where drones dock and deliver samples for analysis. That means shrinking down lab-grade analysis into portable equipment. We’ve already done initial trials with parameters such as dissolved oxygen, pH, temperature, turbidity, and ammonia. The next step is to expand to multiple parameters, including elements of bacterial testing, and get results as close to real time as possible.
And of course, we have to deal with the weather. Some days, the drones just won’t fly safely. In those cases, manual sampling remains part of the toolkit. This isn’t about replacing people; it’s about adding new tools that make monitoring more dynamic and flexible.
Regulatory hurdles can be complex for long-distance drone operations. How is Smart Skies, Healthy Waters navigating them?
Drone regulations require line of sight; we’ve worked with the Civil Aviation Authority to agree on flight corridors and demonstrate safety
Yes, that’s been a big part of the work. Right now, drone regulations require line of sight, which means you need human spotters along the route. That’s not scalable in the long term, but rather than treat it as a barrier, we’ve worked closely with the Civil Aviation Authority to agree on flight corridors and demonstrate safety.
The reality is that technology and regulations will move quickly. Drones are advancing, equipment is getting lighter, and confidence in safety standards is increasing. I genuinely believe that in the near future, drones will be as commonplace as mobile phones — and people will wonder how we ever managed without them.
The project also makes use of advanced modelling to understand what is happening in coastal waters. What role does this play, and what is the vision for this data-driven approach?
We’ve carried out coastal modelling before, often in partnership with universities or consultants, to understand how plumes of water behave in certain conditions and how tides move material around. Those models are valuable, but they’ve always been limited by the data available to feed into them. Most of the time, we’ve only been able to take samples close to the shoreline, which doesn’t give the full picture of what’s happening further out at sea.
With this project, the difference is that drones will collect samples right in the middle of tidal flows and plumes, sometimes kilometres offshore. That gives us a completely new dataset — and when you feed that into the models, the accuracy improves dramatically.
One big challenge is the “lab in a box”: our vision is for containerised mobile labs where drones dock and deliver samples for analysis
The process is iterative. The model might suggest that we should sample in a particular location. The drones then collect the data, we analyse it, and feed the results back in. If the model was right, it reinforces the prediction; if not, it learns and adjusts for next time. Over time, that creates a much smarter, adaptive model of how our coastal waters behave.
The exciting part is that we’ll almost certainly uncover things we didn’t expect. By asking new questions and sampling in new places, we’ll generate insights that could change the way we think about water quality. So for me, modelling in this project isn’t just about predicting what’s happening, it’s about creating a dynamic system that constantly improves, and that will help us make better decisions for the environment and for customers.
Could you tell us about the project partners and how you align such diverse expertise?
We’re fortunate to have a really strong set of partners. Makutu are the integrators, bringing together the IT and engineering elements. Skyports are the drone specialists. Newcastle University are helping with the modelling and analysis. And of course, Microsoft brings huge expertise in cloud computing and AI.
We also have other UK water companies involved — United Utilities, Southern Water, and South West Water — which is important for scalability. If it works here, they can adopt it too.
The way we align everyone is by being clear about values and outcomes. At Northumbrian Water, one of our values is “one team,” and that extends beyond our own staff to our partners. Everyone knows the vision is bigger than their own role, and that’s why it works.
What outcomes will tell you that Smart Skies, Healthy Waters has been successful?
There are the obvious measures, like fewer pollution incidents and improved bathing water quality. We already have 33 out of 35 bathing waters at excellent or good, so we’re starting from a strong position.
But for me, success is also about confidence and behaviour. Are more people using beaches and rivers? Are customers and regulators more confident in the information we provide? Does this approach get adopted more widely across the sector? If, at the end of the project, this has become business as usual and regulators are saying, “Yes, this is how we should all be doing it,” that would be a huge success.
How will real-time monitoring and mobile labs affect your teams’ day-to-day work?
It will make us more dynamic. Instead of doing the same routines regardless of conditions, we’ll be responding to what’s actually happening today. That’s better for the environment and for customers.
It’s also about people. Some worry that technology replaces jobs, but what we’re seeing is upskilling. Colleagues are learning new skills, taking on more fulfilling roles, and staying relevant as the industry evolves.
We’re already installing 390 new monitors in fixed locations that publish results within an hour. Adding drones and mobile labs on top of that will only strengthen our ability to make better, evidence-based decisions.
Northumbrian Water is also leading the River Deep, Mountain AI project. How does it connect with Smart Skies, Healthy Waters?
Yes, that’s another project we’re really excited about — and another one that won around £6 million of funding. The name comes from the song “River Deep, Mountain High,” but the focus is on pulling together a mountain of data about rivers.
If we can show that we are using technology to protect rivers and coasts, we can rebuild confidence in the water sector
It’s about integrating not just water quality information, but also data on agriculture, soil dynamics, land use — everything that affects a catchment. The idea is to make investment decisions based on the whole system, not just one parameter.
The data from Smart Skies, Healthy Waters will feed directly into River Deep, Mountain AI. Together, they’ll give us a much more complete picture of river health and where investment will have the most impact.
Looking ahead, how do you see autonomous systems and AI shaping the future of wastewater and environmental management?
Historically, wastewater networks haven’t been as “smart” as water supply networks. That’s changing.
One example is our Smart Networks programme. The first step is what we call “turning the lights on” — putting monitors into the sewer network so we can see what’s happening. The second step is using AI and real-time weather data to predict flows and potential issues. The third is control: using valves to move flows around the network to prevent spills.
That’s the direction of travel — thinking of the system as a network or catchment, not as isolated assets. With better information, we can make better real-time decisions and better long-term investment choices.
Ultimately, this is about rebuilding trust. The teams I work with care deeply about the environment because they live here too. If we can show that we’re using technology to protect rivers and coasts, we can rebuild confidence in the sector. Northumbrian Water hasn’t had a serious pollution event in three years, and for me, that reflects not just the technology we’re introducing, but also the culture of care and responsibility among our people. People often underestimate how passionate our colleagues are, but we want a clean, healthy environment just as much as our customers do. If technology helps us achieve that, then it’s something to be embraced.