Innovation Delivery Manager

About the Organisation

Spring is the open-innovation hub for the UK and Irish water sector. We work at the centre of a rapidly changing industry shaped by climate change, growing populations, ageing infrastructure and increasing public scrutiny. Our vision is to become global leaders in open innovation. Our mission is to attract, connect and support the brightest thinkers, both within and beyond the sector, so that transformation can happen more quickly. Our objective is to centralise innovation intelligence for the UK water sector.

In practice, we:

• Act as the front door to the UK and Irish water industry, giving companies and suppliers immediate insight into who is doing what, what is working and where the next breakthrough may arise.
• Broker partnerships, share lessons learnt and remove duplication so that ideas move from concept to deployment at pace.
• Give water companies the time and headspace to innovate by curating intelligence, building networks and highlighting opportunities.
• Help the sector respond to its toughest challenges, ensuring resilient, sustainable water services for customers, communities and the environment.

The Role

The Innovation Delivery Manager is responsible for gathering innovation intelligence and presenting it through Spring’s three core services: brokerage, fact finding and sector coordination. Water company innovation priorities are captured and maintained by the wider team. This role works from that foundation, identifying intelligence that matches those priorities and delivering it through the appropriate service. The role does not set priorities. It responds to them.

The post holder will have a solid working knowledge of water company operational processes, sufficient to assess whether an innovation solution is credible and applicable in a utility environment. They will be a confident communicator, able to present findings clearly to technical and non-technical audiences alike, and will attend sector events to identify developments that strengthen the intelligence picture. Every output should be clear, well-structured and immediately useful to the water companies receiving it. The post holder will work as an integrated part of the Intelligence Team, sharing findings openly and contributing to the team’s collective knowledge base.

Our Services

The responsibilities of this role are structured around Spring’s three core services.

• Brokerage: Making targeted, informed introductions between water companies and the innovators, suppliers and researchers best placed to help them.
• Fact Finding: Researching a specific innovation challenge or technology area on behalf of a water company, assessing what has been tried across the sector, what has worked and what has not, and presenting findings in a format the company can act upon.
• Sector Coordination: Bringing water companies together around shared challenges, enabling collective learning and reducing duplication.

Key Responsibilities

• Intelligence Gathering: Gather innovation intelligence matched to the priorities of each subscribing water company, using the knowledge base already held by the team as the starting point. Attend sector events and industry gatherings to identify emerging developments and relevant activity that strengthens the intelligence picture.
• Brokerage: Identify relevant technologies, solutions and expertise matched to each water company’s innovation priorities and present these through Spring’s brokerage service.
• Fact Finding: Lead fact finding activity on behalf of water companies, researching specific innovation challenges and technology areas to a depth that produces actionable intelligence.
• Sector Coordination: Support and deliver sector coordination activities that bring water companies together around shared innovation challenges.
• Communication and Reporting: Produce clear, well-structured reports and briefings that translate technical and market intelligence into outputs stakeholders can understand and act upon.
• Team Contribution: Share intelligence gathered through research, events and engagement promptly with the wider team.

Skills

• Process knowledge – A working understanding of water or wastewater systems.
• Evidence assessment – Able to evaluate the credibility and relevance of a technology, trial result or market claim.
• Intelligence gathering – Able to identify and synthesise relevant intelligence from across the sector and wider market.
• Technical translation – Able to take complex technical or academic content and present it in terms that are meaningful to a non-specialist audience.
• Report writing – Produces well-structured, clearly written outputs.
• Presentation – Confident presenting to varied audiences.
• Stakeholder engagement – Confident in conversations with technical experts.
• Independent awareness – Identifies relevant developments across the sector.
• Team contribution – Works as part of a shared intelligence effort.

Experience

• Experience working within the water or wastewater sector.
• Familiarity with how innovation is evaluated, trialled and adopted in a utility context.
• Experience producing technical reports or briefings for a non-specialist audience.
• Experience presenting findings or recommendations to professional audiences.
• A track record of delivering against targets or value metrics in a client‑facing or stakeholder‑driven role.
• Experience working across organisational boundaries with suppliers, consultants, academia or other utilities is an advantage.

Requirements

• Legal right to work in the United Kingdom.
• Willingness and ability to travel within the UK and Ireland for sector events, team sessions and stakeholder meetings.
• Innovative, purpose‑driven environment at the heart of water sector transformation.
• Hybrid working model with high levels of trust and autonomy.
• Pension scheme with 3% employee and 6% employer contributions.
• 27 days’ annual leave plus bank holidays.
• Life assurance at three times salary.
• Professional development and three paid volunteering days per year.