Beal Consultants

Providing exert advice to the water industry

(+44) 07970 675908

About Us

Simon Beal has over 30 years of experience of working as a consultant within the UK Water Industry. In recent years he has led the technical development for a wide range of different studies within the areas of economics, asset management, supply-demand management and charging policy. This work has been undertaken for UK water companies, UKWIR, Regulators and other utilities and business sectors such as local councils. 


Simon can provide support and advice to clients, often at short notice, across all areas of regulatory planning. His particular strength is the development of spreadsheet based tools/models that companies can then use after the completion of the project.


Simon provided temporary cover as the Leakage Strategy Manager for a UK water company during a six-month assignment and was also the Project Director of the Best Practice Leakage Study for the Tripartite Group of Ofwat, Environment Agency and DEFRA. And through this developed close working relationships with key Industry and Regulatory staff.


Simon works closely with clients to ensure delivery of outputs that fully meet the client’s requirements.

 

 

Simon has over 30 years experience of the water industry

 

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  • Developed bespoke spreadsheet based forecasting models that enable past trends to be used to develop a forecasts with uncertainty ranges.
  • Incorporated risk and uncertainty modelling into planning models (using @Risk) to enable companies to investigate trade-off between risk/cost and capex/opex.
  • Within the business planning process for the Water Industry has applied economic principles to long-term business planning. This has considered the cost:benefit trade-off for both supply-demand and capital maintenance.
  • Provided expert advice to a range on companies on the economic level of leakage, and its wider application in supply-demand balance planning, including the incorporation of environmental impact.
  • Independent reviews and audits of company approaches including leakage, supply-demand and options appraisal.
  • Extended the least cost planning approach to include carbon accounting to enable companies to prepare carbon reduction strategies.
  • Developed flexible optimisation routines to enable companies to identify programmes that were least cost, lowest carbon impact or lowest risk for example.
  • Developed an application of long-term supply-demand planning for wastewater systems.
  • Worked closely with water company teams to develop tools to determine the rate of network deterioration, based on an analysis of flow data. This has then been used to prepare a business case for mains replacement.
  • Developed an approach to quantify the impact the increase in the asset base will have on future capital maintenance requirements.
  • Detailed knowledge of regulatory requirements for supply-demand planning and capital maintenance.
  • Undertook independent audits of capital maintenance plans and leakage studies
  • Extensive experience of developing spreadsheet based tools in either Excel or Google Sheets, making use of scripts, VBA and macros to ensure the tools can be used by non-specialists
  • Also has wider experience of other packags, including the development of Acess databases, data analysis using SPSS and development of dashboards using Power BI
  • Member of the Royal Economic Society
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