453 Water Risk, Governance, and Community Engagement with Dr. Annette Davison

Industrial water professionals sit at the intersection of risk, regulation, and community trust. In this episode, Dr. Annette Davison (“the water risk doctor”) joins Trace Blackmore to show how disciplined governance, clear supply chain thinking, and community engagement can turn fragmented water systems into coherent, defensible risk management frameworks. 

Water risk from source to customer 

Annette starts with a simple question most customers never ask: “Where’s your water coming from?” She walks through a conceptual supply chain from source to end point—collection, transfer, treatment, distribution, and customers—then layers governance on top. Who holds custody at each handover point? Are water quality objectives clearly defined and documented? What happens when something “stuffs up,” and how is that communicated downstream? For leaders, it’s a practical reminder that risk isn’t just about treatment performance; it’s about clearly assigned responsibilities along the entire chain. 

Governance, ISO 31000, and the Water31K framework 

Drawing on her background in microbial ecology and environmental law, Annette explains why “you can’t do a good risk assessment unless you’ve got the context right.” She describes how ISO 31000 inspired the Water31K framework—an approach that is jurisdictionally agnostic and capable of spanning drinking water, recycled water, and recreational water guidelines. Using Water31K, her team walks into any jurisdiction and systematically maps stakeholders, legal and formal requirements, reporting lines, and internal obligations so utilities can see their governance landscape clearly before they start scoring risk. 

Critical control points, AI, and learning from incidents 

Critical control points may have started in the food industry, but Annette shows how they can be sharpened for water. Her test— “would a computer understand this?”—forces teams to close logical gaps and define thresholds and responses precisely enough to be automated. She also explores how AI and “agents as a service” could help analyze incident data, while warning that AI is useless if utilities haven’t done the basics: monitoring the right things, at the right place, at the right time, with a firm grasp of supply chain risk. Her mantra: never waste a good incident; dissect it and make sure it doesn’t happen again. 

Regulations, public–private contracts, and community projects 

Using Australia as an example, Annette unpacks the complexity of layered laws—Commonwealth, state, local—and the different regimes governing public, metro, and private utilities. She shares a five-part checklist for public–private contracts (quantity, quality, maintenance, ownership, operations) and explains how weak agreements can undermine water quality objectives and monitoring. In parallel, she talks about social initiatives like One Street and One Creek, community-led work on Rocky Creek, and bringing STEAM (not just STEM) into high schools so the next generation sees water as a diverse, creative career path. 

Strong water risk governance isn’t just about compliance; it’s about making better decisions for customers and communities over decades. This conversation gives leaders language, frameworks, and examples they can use to tighten their own systems and engage people beyond the plant fence. 

Stay engaged, keep learning, and continue scaling up your knowledge! 

 

Timestamps   

02:15 — Trace reflects on the end of 2025, recap planning, and how goal setting shapes a stronger 2026 for sales and learning.

11:12 — Introducing lab partner Dr. Annette Davison and her diverse day-to-day across mediation workshops, field work, and high school outreach.

12:10 — The Risk Edge Group mission: protecting people, processes, and the planet from contaminated water with documents, templates, tools, and audits.

13:14 — “Incidents Online” as a free learning resource and how sharing real events helps others protect themselves.

14:10 — Becoming Australian Water Association’s Water Professional of the Year and launching the One Street and One Creek social initiatives.

15:29 — From microbial ecology and contaminated sites to environmental law and a career focused on water quality governance.

19:47 — Training as a core “case study”: lighting up operators and directors by finally explaining the “why” behind procedures and funding.

22:00 — Walking the water supply chain from source to end point and identifying governance handover points and quality objectives.

24:22 — Strategy-to-operations workflow: from planning and design to commissioning and operations, and why design must serve operators.

24:45 — Critical control points, space diarrhoea origin-story, and the discipline of defining CCPs so clearly “a computer would understand.”

30:30 — How Water31K creates a common language for teasing out complex legal and regulatory structures across jurisdictions.

33:03 — The multi-layered Australian governance example: Commonwealth guidelines, state acts, and differing regimes for local, metro, and private utilities.

36:23 — Rocky Creek and the Karingai “Kraken” network: turning an unloved creek into a pilot for community care and data-driven education.

38:19 — onestreet.earth, mobilising your community, and building a playbook so others can replicate a “One Creek” model.

39:21 — STEAM power in schools: bringing science, technology, engineering, art, and maths together to improve water communication.

42:01 — Public vs private utilities, the Water Industry Competition Act, nimble private operators, and the five-part contract checklist.

44:39 — Emerging hazards (microplastics, PFAS) and the reminder not to take our eyes off the basics while we monitor new risks.

46:19 — Annette’s core message: we’ve got to love water and help customers understand what it takes to keep it safe and reliable.

 

Quotes

“You can't do a good risk assessment unless you've got the context right.” 

“Where's your water coming from? How do you collect it? How do you transfer it to where it needs to go to? How do you treat it?” 

“We now just keep asking ourselves the same question, will the computer understand this?” 

“AI's not going to help us until we get the right inputs to AI. Let's get the basics right first.” 

“We've got to love water. We've got to make sure that people are aware of water, not only the technocrats, but also the people who are using it.” 

 

Connect with Annette Davison

Email: [e-mail] 

Website: https://www.riskedge.com.au/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annettedavison/ 

 

Guest Resources Mentioned  

The Risk Edge Group – Water31K Framework & Services 

Incidents Online (Risk Edge) 

Risk Edge Training (e.g., CCP and Governance Courses) 

Ku-ring-gai Community Rotary Network (“the Kraken”) 

Australian Drinking Water Guidelines (ADWG) 

WHO Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality 

The Overstory – Richard Powers 

The Three-Body Problem – Cixin Liu 

The Covenant of Water – Abraham Verghese 

 

Scaling UP! H2O Resources Mentioned 

AWT (Association of Water Technologies) 

Scaling UP! H2O Academy video courses 

Submit a Show Idea 

The Rising Tide Mastermind 

 

2025 Events for Water Professionals 

Check out our Scaling UP! H2O Events Calendar where we’ve listed every event Water Treaters should be aware of by clicking HERE.