I used to be utterly useless at making pancakes, honestly, I really was. Every year, Pancake Day approached, and I’d feel the pressure of three young children wanting – and expecting – Daddy to nail it. Let’s face it, you’re not going to find a harsher food critic than a hungry child. Whether they’re burned, stuck to the pan, or stuck to the ceiling come to that, Pancake Day every year turned into a bit of a flop. After testing lots of different recipes, trying different techniques, I couldn’t quite work out what was causing my efforts to be off par and what I needed to do differently to get it just right.
In my view, delivering a water efficiency programme is like making the perfect pancake – crucial to both are the right ingredients, timing and conditions. Water efficiency programmes are delivered in a complex world, with a myriad of factors that can impact the outcomes of a particular intervention, including external factors (conditions), intervention design (ingredients and timing), and other interventions (other ingredients). Key to achieving success, lies in disentangling and understanding how these factors influence outcomes.
To achieve this, the art lies in effectively evaluating. Why? Because only through thorough assessment can we really understand (and share) the impact.
Enter data science – the secret ingredient to effective evaluation! With vast amounts of data generated through water efficiency programmes, smart meters and customer engagement surveys, data science can turn overwhelming datasets into clear insights. Data science doesn’t just crunch numbers; it helps effectively evaluate such that you can increasingly rule out potential alternative causes of water saving, ruling out other factors, and moving your evaluation outcomes from possible to probable impact. This helps us have confidence that planned activities can achieve targets.
Here’s the story of Pancake Day 2025. I planned well in advance – I had my ingredients, recipe and saucepan at the ready. I had a few years of attempts under my belt, so some learning to lean on. I’d shared my challenges with friends and family who kindly gave some advice. I lacked a ‘control’ and a team of data scientists, to be honest and say I’m probably hovering around Level 2 on the Pancake Confidence Scale. My kids said they liked them (the chocolate spread probably helped), so I’ll take that as a win. This (very loose!) connection between pancakes and water efficiency highlights the crucial role effective and robust evaluation plays in success.
At Artesia, we combine data science and water industry expertise to understand complex problems and help evaluate water efficiency interventions. We recently developed the Water Efficiency Confidence Scale: Evaluation Framework to support practitioners in their work (more information here) and can also support you to:
Deliver independent and technically robust evaluations to disentangle the specific water savings of your water efficiency programmes and interventions.
Design evaluation methodologies for you to implement that follow the Water Efficiency Confidence Scale (WECS).
Review your existing evaluation approaches to understand their current position on the WECS and co-create a plan to improve.
If you’re reading this then you’re no doubt involved in the planning or delivery of a water efficiency intervention of some sort (or really interested in pancakes). We’d love to talk to you about helping you effectively evaluate your programme and truly understand the impact. Please get in touch.
