We designed the agenda and speaker panel to reflect a European market that remains fragmented—but is now converging, and doing so at pace.
Our research conversations with European utilities highlights three distinct realities shaping that convergence.
Mature smart water metering markets—such as the UK, Spain, France, Italy, and the Netherlands—are already operating (some at scale) and are now under pressure to prove impact: linking smart meter data to measurable consumption reduction and repeatable operational value.
Alongside this, acceleration markets—driven by EU funding and digitalisation mandates—are moving quickly. In countries such as Belgium, Germany, Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic, rollout is being enabled through funding and policy momentum—but utilities are now confronting a second challenge: how to translate deployment into measurable outcomes, and how to avoid repeating the early-stage bottlenecks seen in some mature markets.
In water-stressed regions—Southern Europe in particular—the driver is more immediate. In Portugal, Italy Greece, and Cyprus, smart metering is increasingly positioned as a demand management tool, shaped by drought exposure, seasonal population swings, and regulatory pressure to reduce consumption—placing far greater emphasis on behavioural change and customer response than in other markets.
Across the rest of Europe, many utilities remain in evaluation mode—for example in Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Slovakia—where uncertainty around funding models, technology risk, and long-term ROI is still slowing adoption. In these markets, the focus is less on optimisation and more on decision-making: whether to invest at all, and how to structure programmes in a way that avoids stranded investment.
Across all of these segments, one thing is consistent: utilities are no longer asking what smart metering is—they are asking how to make it work.
This is where the agenda is deliberately focused. It is built around practitioner-led insight into the decisions, trade-offs, and execution models that actually determine outcomes—moving beyond theory into what delivers in practice.
You will hear directly from senior operators on the questions that matter most:
- How do you reduce household leakage faster—and prove it?
- How do you manage demand effectively in water-stressed regions?
- How do you improve billing accuracy without increasing disputes?
- How do you prevent customer backlash as visibility increases?
- How do you use data to target interventions that actually change outcomes?
Whilst addressing common gaps many of you told us you face:
- where data does not consistently translate into action
- where customer response is assumed, not engineered
- where ownership is unclear
- and where value is claimed, but not consistently proven
This agenda is designed to confront those (and other) gaps directly—and to surface what actually needs to change for smart metering to deliver ROI at scale.
To Summarise The Agenda By Day:
DAY 1 — Making Smart Metering Deliver Operationally
- Turning investment into proven ROI
- Moving from data visibility to field action
- Making leakage reduction tangible and repeatable
- Fixing execution gaps that limit impact
- Building confidence in the data that drives decisions
DAY 2 — Making Smart Metering Work for Customers
- Turning insight into measurable behaviour change
- Getting alert design right—timely, relevant, actionable
- Handling complex customer conversations effectively
- Reducing disputes through clearer, more defensible billing
- Preventing complaints through proactive intervention
Both days are designed to find answers to questions like::
“How do we make smart metering actually work operationally - as well as for customers - while delivering financial payback?”
Covering
- ROI
- data → action
- leakage
- execution
- system trust
Where Smart Metering Delivers — And Why It Sometimes Doesn’t
Take one session:
“Turning Smart Metering Into Performance—Not Just Data”
Sessions like this address the uncomfortable reality:
Why does the same technology deliver radically different outcomes across utilities?
Expect a candid, peer-led discussion focused on what works in practice.
“Why Smart Meter Data Still Isn’t Driving Action—And How to Fix It”
This session tackles a growing frustration: having the data—but not the outcomes.
It examines where execution breaks down, and how leading utilities have overcome issues around ownership, accountability, and operational alignment.
Across all of these segments, one theme consistently emerges: value realisation. The agenda is designed to make this practical rather than theoretical—starting with Day One, which focuses on execution for maximum ROI, specifically how to turn smart meter data into measurable operational outcomes.
On the operational side, sessions examine how utilities are converting high-resolution data into repeatable performance—covering leak detection, NRW reduction, demand forecasting, and the transition from insight to field action.
To support this, the separately bookable day 2 agenda addresses the customer dimension specifically from a CX team perspective—to ensure increased data visibility always translates into improved outcomes. Talks and discussions explore how utilities are redesigning communications, refining alert strategies, and proactively preventing escalation, particularly for vulnerable or high-risk customer groups.