Welcome to the Dudley Unplugged podcast, a show that gets to

the heart of plumbing. Welcome

back to another episode of Dudley Unplugged. Today we're going to be talking to two experts

in the field of plumbing and products designed for the water industry. I'm

your host, Mark Morris, and we're joined on Dudley Unplugged today by Rob

Huels, who is the MD of Waterfit, which

is a company that is part of the Thomas Dudley Group, and also by Anne McDonagh, who

it says here is one of our leading salespeople at Thomas Dudley Products, but

I don't think that can be correct, so welcome both. Morning,

Morning, Mark. Morning, Mark. Yeah, not too bad. Morning, missus. Really good,

So Rob, if I can start with you. You're the MD of WaterFit. So

just a couple of questions on there. How long have you been doing that? And more importantly, can

you tell us a little bit about WaterFit, what it does? You've

got some really good innovative products over there, so that'd be great if you just tell us

Absolutely. So I joined WaterFit back in 2016, which

was a really exciting move for me to go from a

big multinational to WaterFit as a small, fast-growing

business. And WaterFit manufacture fittings

for the water industry that connect from the water main to your

house on what's called the service pipe or the

comms pipe. And other than the pipe itself,

we make all of the components, all the fittings that are required. So

our wheelhouse, if you like, is under pressure fittings.

We can tap into pipes without causing

a leak. So we can put new connections onto an existing main

I always find that quite interesting because it's the sort of, a bit

like toilet products really, things you never see. And you only ever

see them when they go wrong, when there's water spouting everywhere, or you drive past somewhere and

there's water just cascading down the street, which I think is quite, oh yeah, okay, that's

gone wrong somewhere, but you never know where it's gone wrong. So as far

as water fit, I suppose you were looking at I know you've made some really

sort of good progress in innovation to help the

water companies out, so they don't necessarily have to dig up a

huge amount of roads and pipe work to get to the water. So I

know there's one of your products that has been sort of picked up

by a lot of the companies in the water industry. I would like

to remember what it's named, but I'm sure you can tell us all what it's called. Happily, it's MultiFit. MultiFit,

That's the one. Yeah, so WaterFit, I

mean, if I look at the research and design side of things, we're

a small business, but about a third of our employees are involved in research and

See that's quite a staggering number really when you think about it

because a lot of, some companies will give hardly any sort

of time to sort of R&D. But a third of your employees, that's quite

Absolutely. And it's across the piece from engineers who are involved

in design, through to people, even myself involved

out in the field, to work with customers to identify needs,

and to build that strategy in terms of where the products are going, all

the way through the team on the factory floor. We've got specialists

in our machine shop, who are really good at building

prototypes. And between us, we

spend our time looking at really things that haven't changed for

50 years. The water industry as a whole has

got a great history. In fact, in the UK, hard as it may seem

to be to believe sometimes these days, we

were one of the first countries in the world to have a really strong water

infrastructure, thanks to the Victorians. So

there's a lot of tried and tested ways and methods to

put potable water pipes together and to connect them. And

really what Wardovit have done is we've taken these methods

that haven't changed in a really long time and gone back to basics and

said with modern materials, if you started from scratch, what would

you do now? And that process of reinvention is

bringing new innovations to the market and it's bringing real-term savings to

So multi-fit is a self-tapping ferrule strap. So

that is attached to the water main going down the middle of your street. And

then it forms a connection to the service pipe that's going to

your house. So your house connection, which would be 25 or

32 mil polyethylene pipe, connects into the top of

that self-tapping ferrule strap. And

inside that fitting, that connection, we have a cutter that

you can wind down into the pipe to create a hole to allow the water to travel through.

But the clever bit is that the whole thing is sealed before you do that, so

that you can do that on a live main with water flowing through it. And

Multifit's innovation really was to develop a version of that that would fit

multiple sizes of pipe, that was lighter weight, that

used innovative materials. We were using things like stainless steel, which

hadn't been used by the industry for that application before. So

we... Just have a pause

I've got a question for you there Rob as well actually. So what

sort of pressure would be coming through these pipes where

this multi-fit unit is going to be clipping onto? Because

there's quite a large amount of pressure and force coming through water pipes

like that, so I'd imagine when you're cutting straight into them there's going to be quite a bit Quite

It can really vary and that is one of the challenges actually. You can

have very low pressure in some mains and some applications, down

below 1 bar of pressure. Although there are targets

as minimums that water companies have to provide. but it can run normally

up to about 10 bar, but we've seen, we've got recordings of water

mains running at 17, 18 bar, which is pretty exciting.

It doesn't happen for very long, you might get fluctuations if you've got other

equipment that's faulty on the network. And

all of our products are tested up to either 24 or 30 bar

I suppose products like multi-fit for the industry can be quite...

it can save them a lot of time and effort when they're connecting pipes

up. So that's got to be a benefit for the water industry. I mean,

I recently read online, and this is what I took online, that about three billion litres

of water is leaking from underground pipes every day. I mean, three billion. So

that's about 15 million full bathfuls every

day of water that's leaking. That's not including what

we found with the leaky loo, there's another four million into the leaky loo. So

I suppose anything that we can do that's going to be able to assist the

water companies to reduce that and to increase

maintenance time so it's going to be a real benefit to not just for the water companies

Absolutely and it's good that you raise it because I think it's an

issue that continues, has been and continues to be a really important issue

for the water industry as a whole. Water companies really focus on leakage and

have been for a long time. They have pretty serious targets

set by Ofwat in terms of leakage reduction. And

also good that you mentioned customer side because if

you look at where leaks occur, well I'm not

sure of the latest but it's often described as about 50-50 between the two. leakages

within your house, very commonly on your toilet. They

are a major source of leak that most people wouldn't normally

Yeah, I mean, I suppose it's Back in the past, I think

we've discussed this in other podcasts, but where you have the

pipe that you throw outside of your house, and the water would leak out, you'd spot that straight away.

Now it's leaking from inside the toilet, you don't necessarily spot

it. From experience, you

get the offer, do you want to ensure the pipe work between your house and

the road? And of course most people, I don't know if it's most people, I'd

say a lot of people probably don't bother. and getting the insurance on that until they

It's kind of a sight out of mind mark in most cases, isn't it, with a lot of people, really?

But we are being, the world as

a whole, or certainly the UK, is being pushed towards the

change in us looking after the planet. more general

and water's becoming more of a subject into that for the everyday. So

I think we're on a, we'll start the journey now but it's

something that will become in more people's consciousness as

We've all got to play a part in the next generation of the world that

And I think in the UK especially because we have plenty of rainfall, we

tend not to appreciate the value of water in the way that other countries maybe do.

I can't remember the last time anyone built any kind of

reservoir sort of in the country really. and you

think about the population growth, and there's no extra reservoirs anywhere,

which doesn't really help anybody because you need somewhere to store them. It

might rain a lot, but it all just goes down the drain in the end.

So I suppose thinking about that, I suppose water savings... and

sustainability are very important. Is that what's driving your MPD teams?

It's a key part of our targets. With any new

product that we bring in we have certain key things that we look for every time, which

include carbon reduction, water saving

and longevity really. So we're really focused on making

sure that we don't interrupt supplies during installation. Those

are probably the core things that we focus on as a general rule for

I suppose, I mean, it's important the fact that people know that these products

are all made here. They're made in Dudley and

they're designed to help the British water industry out. And I think that's very

important that people understand that, you know, Thomas Dudley as a

whole, but WaterFit especially in this case, they manufacture on

site, you've got your own production area, your own warehousing area,

R&D facilities, which I think is very important for

people to... see how that benefits the

country as a whole. Just having a manufacturing centre

here, people think everything comes abroad, but it doesn't. All the warfare products are made here,

which I think is a really good example

And it's great that you say that, because this is a global industry. You'd

think that communicating water through a pipe to people's houses

should be a universal need across the world. But actually, each country does

it quite differently. And the UK, again, partly because of

its old network, is quite unique in its needs. Not

just the UK, but even specific parts of the UK where the geology may

be different, will have different needs. And by having a manufacturer and

a designer on your doorstep as we are at WaterFit,

that enables us to partner up with water companies to understand their specific needs.

and develop bespoke products for them. So really our niche, if you like, is

to not be a Ford Model T. We don't make

one product that you either have to like or lump. We can really customize

down to the individual customer, which we have done very

That's good. I mean, I suppose for if you're a water company and you're

out there and you're looking for, you know, how to solve a problem, and

it might not even be a problem that you think, what if it could deal with, it's worth

coming to speak to you guys just to see, you know, is there anything that

I mean this is the secret that our team probably shouldn't divulge but the

secret our team have really is that

they spend a lot of time on site with our customers understanding

the way that they work. And it's sometimes people

will come to us with a problem that we can help them solve but sometimes we'll

see the problem. And so very much I encourage

my team to spend time with our customers even

if there's not a specific need in mind because the

It is, I mean, like you say, sometimes it takes a set of eyes that aren't

too close to it to fit. It's that old saying, you can't see the wood for the trees. But

sometimes you can come at something from a completely different angle and go, oh

yeah, why don't you do it like this? And then I say, well, yeah, because you've always done

it like that. And you think, well, if you do it like this, it actually saves a lot of time and effort. And

the amount of times people say that, but you know what, I never actually thought of it that way.

Sometimes it can take someone from outside to come in and do that. I think we're all

guilty of that. I think every company is guilty of that. So,

I mean, just, Waterfit forms part of Thomas Dudley. So,

can you just quickly, how that actually sort of works in practice? And

so, I mean, Thomas Dudley, he also owns quite

a few different businesses. And so, how did Thomas Dudley and Waterfit actually sort

So, Originally, Waterfitt was

founded by Qalis Foundry back in the 1950s, the late

50s, and it grew very

strongly through to the 80s, had a bit of a tough time around the turn of

the 2000s. Thomas Dudley acquired them in 2005 and moved them

from Willinghall to the site they're in now on Birmingham New Road, and

invested a significant amount of money to help turn that business

around and save the jobs of those involved. Um, uh,

Martin Dudley himself was involved in those early days. And then my predecessor,

Simon Boyce, uh, ran the business for a period of time. And

the key focus through that whole period was again, this process

of reinvention, uh, and reassessing products, uh,

re-understanding, reconnecting with our customers, building partnerships.

I suppose it makes it quite an exciting place to work when you're constantly looking

to sort of bring new products on rather than just sort of

manage a portfolio. That

is a very important part of work as well, but I think MPD, when

you're developing new products for new solutions, it's

an exciting moment when you get that little bit of a nugget of

an idea that you take it from there and then actually get it to a product that

Absolutely. I mean, for me, We have our three values, family, teamwork,

and partnership. And partnership, we've talked about a lot in terms of how

we deal with our customers. But for my team, seeing

this growth and feeling this momentum, we've always been a small family. There's

only a few of us there. And we work very tightly. There's very

little gap between me at one end of the organization, if you like, and

the rest of the team. We are all in one space. We all work really tightly

together. And everyone has their

bit that they contribute to the whole. So yeah, it's been

an exciting journey we've been on so far. And yeah,

So I suppose the question for both of you at this point is, so

how do you sort of see that the challenges that are facing Waterfit and

Thomas Dudley as a whole over the next few years, is it going to be driven by

looking at new products to develop water savings? Where do you see the

I suppose from the Thomas Dudley point of view, Mark, We're

in a market that's quite mature versus Rob's market,

where Rob's coming up with, you know, WaterFit are coming up with innovation products

to solve problems that are not necessarily a problem yet, but until

you prove there's a solution for them. Whereas we're in more of a mature

market. We've got an ever-changing landscape from

people, younger generation of plumbers coming through that might not have

the one brand loyalty that the older generation have

as well. So we've got to We've got to figure out ways of tackling

that, whether that be new innovative products, water-saving products. We

have to come from very different angles of

mix of solutions for stuff, whether that be

solutions for plumbers, making it easier for people to

fit on site. Is it quick and easy and that's

going to be your SP for people to come and buy it? Or is it going to be a

water-saving thing which is then sold to the water boards? and

to the wider kind of audience like that so our challenge is really is trying

I suppose it's when it comes to things like toilet product and

products that go under the ground as well from a general public's point

of view we're more interested in that they work than

Yeah and yeah Bathrooms, I think, has probably changed a

lot over the years, because now people want it to be more aesthetically pleasing. You

know, buttons instead of handles, and things that actually drive people's taste.

I want how it looks before I think about how it actually works. Coming

from a product point of view, it's like, how is it actually going to work? How am I going to actually fix

that problem, how that's going to work? So,

just to go on that. Obviously, I think we had a dividing line over

the last few years, which was COVID. And you've worked

So, how have you seen things sort of pre-COVID to

sort of post-COVID? Because we have that sort of, it's almost like, yeah

a reset almost where COVID came along and then everything

changed and then how everybody worked changed and I remember that you

know we couldn't even merchants would close their doors and

be trying to serve people out of hatches on doorways yeah so how have you

sort of seen probably I suppose of course for both of you really have you seen pre-COVID

flex a little bit on what people would be feeling

in the general public about it, you know, it almost

like was nature's way of resetting the the nation of

saying we need to slow down a little bit here, we, you

know, realize that things can actually change, we

can work in different ways, we can work from home, we've

got other solutions, we can work online. It forced

people into an accelerated change that was probably changing anyway

but it just forced it along a little bit quicker and I think when it's come back,

people initially have come back a bit more relaxed. and

then slowly but surely it's back to full speed.

Everybody wants everything urgently again as well. So it kind

of had a period of time where everybody was accepting that it

may take a little bit longer to get this two-year-old. Now

we've almost gone full circle back where the world's completely changed

into the circle where everything is instant

It's accelerated quickly. People get used to ordering online. So

you order from Amazon, you get it next day. And I

think people kind of expect that kind of service with almost everything

now. Even probably down to a solution for

a problem, they probably want it done in half the time that there was probably

available before. So I suppose it's

a measurable impact. of COVID that people don't

really think about is how that actually changes interactions

I mean, we had quite a different experience for a lot of people, I think, during COVID

because the day that the first lockdown was announced, I spoke

to my team and said, I think we're probably in tomorrow. I'm

going to go in and if I see any of you there, then I'd be grateful for

that. But I'm not going to mandate anything. And

to my surprise, everybody, everybody was in. Within 24 hours,

we had letters from five water companies saying, we are essential services.

We can't function without your products. Therefore, you're an essential service.

Please be in. So the whole team stayed in

the whole time through COVID. We had almost

no downtime. We had some tricky moments. And

I think everybody in the team would agree that the start of

I think no one knew what it was really going to be, did they?

Masks on, screens up, no one really knew the

We were putting systems and processes in place where

we didn't have the means to judge their efficacy. We

didn't know if they would work or not. But we had to go with it. And

I think it was formative, really. The team were close before that, but we

That's a really good, that's a good message I suppose, is the fact that through adversity brings

people closer and it was a bit of a strange time. I

mean I remember, I worked through it and I remember the Birmingham New

Road which is usually extraordinarily busy. You could go and lie

down on it if you wanted to play football on there, you saw a car every sort of

half an hour maybe if you were lucky. which was a bit weird because of how busy

that road actually is. Visiting

customers-wise, I bet that pushed through the Zoom meeting, didn't

It did, yeah. I suppose it accelerated people

figuring out different ways of working, really, and there was a lot of people who rightly

or wrongly would use it as an excuse where you couldn't go and see him, you know,

or they didn't want you to, so a lot of stuff was... Sure that wasn't just you?

Maybe that was just me, Mark, yeah. No, I think him delving into it, I think all

the rest of our sales guys got out, yeah, thanks for that. But

yeah, there was definitely an aspect of... Yeah just

people finding different ways of kind of working and like you

said the team and the teams and now I see

as that kind of took a back step now and people are more into that

kind of more face-to-face kind of sales sort of approach from my point

I suppose pendulum swing down there, so it's swung right off the

scale one way and then it has to sort of reassert itself

back into sort of almost normal operations. And I

think people are just, you know, COVID's just another, I've got a cold. Is it COVID? Yeah,

okay, carry on and we just get on with it now. And I think

that's, I suppose it shows the resilience of people and

I think, The resilience of our company, I think, at Stamfordley as

a whole, I think, you know, we sort of weathered that particular storm pretty well, I

think. So, I mean, you've

Have you said, I mean I remember, well one

of the industries I worked in, I worked in a company that

used to supply funeral trays, we used to go and visit funeral directors, and

they varied from big sort of shop fronts

almost to ones that I It

was somewhere down in the New Forest area. And I

was sure that this front door was the funeral director's. I didn't know.

So I went in and it looked like a front room. It had a sofa,

fire, and I thought, I've walked into someone's house here. This is a

bit odd. And then I noticed that there was a funeral

director's sign somewhere. I thought, well, it's definitely here. But it felt and looked

just like a front room. And I was like, that's very strange. And I've

been in one where they had rock music playing. So, I mean, from, your

experience of different customers, I suppose, you've seen it all from small one-man bands

And just to ask you then, Mark, did you get out of that job because you thought it was

a dead-end job? Yeah. Oh, no. No, thank you. God

Yes, I've visited many, and I suppose, not

to sound a bit corny and cheesy when I say this, but when

I started back in 2012, I took on the Midlands area for Thomas Dudley, and

naturally the head office is in the Midlands, so

it's quite a prestige area to look after. It's

quite an undertaking when you would take it over, and from that transition, I've

seen customers that have never met you before, and

then you fast forward three or four or five years later and

you walk into these people and they're like walking into a mate's kind

of place and you get on really well with them. That's a real heartwarming kind

of feeling when you get to that point with people because it's

a partnership as we trust on it. It's a trust thing as well.

So that's always quite nice. But yeah, it's definitely been some very

different experiences from large multinational businesses

that we call on and visit. to your one-man bands that

would sit down and quite happily have a cup of tea and talk about the football for

Have you got a favourite story of something that went horribly wrong or anything like that?

Yeah, I've had a few over the years as you can imagine. I

think my memorable one was Before

we had a sort of proper technical department, if you like looking after all the technical calls,

we got a phone call from a plumber who'd

fitted one of our urinal sensors. Now just for the audience, a urinal

sensor sits in front of the bowl. It's got a five to 10 meter proximity

sensor built into it, so you walk up to the urinal, as you walk off it flushes it. And

he rung me up and he says, well, your urinal control's faulty

here. I don't know, the only way I can get it to flush

is when I have to get a set of steps out and I have to climb the set of steps and

wave my hand in front of it. And I

started laughing and I said, and I apologised and said, I'm not, I'm mean

to laugh but, where have you fitted it? And he said, well

I've fitted it up in the ceiling tile up in the roof. Right,

so you're on the wall, yeah, and he said, yeah,

but the only way is when I get on the steps and put my hand in front of it.

He said, surely we can't be doing that. I

originally thought it must have been some kind of wind-up error or something, but

clearly not at all. To think that

was somebody who was in the plumbing and heating industry who

just completely and utterly got it wrong. After a bit of re-education, he

realized that he'd made quite an error on his way. He's more

educated about your auto controls after that, to say the

I suppose that shows the variety of information you've got to hold.

Not just, you know, how does something flush the toilet, but how does

a sensor work, and just trying to pick up on what they're trying to tell you,

sort of like saying, yeah, you know, probably not in

Yeah, and try to remain diplomatic as well at the same time, yeah, although I

did start laughing too as I said down the phone, because there's nothing I could do at

that point, really, to be honest, because that is a laughable moment when you get something like

I would say he's going out and about. I mean, I know you've had a little

bit of bad luck lately where someone apparently broke into your car outside of

a hotel. Yeah, I can tell this is a bit of a leading question here,

Just a little bit of background on this then. I'm

not going to name the name of the washing machine but it's not a very good brand that broke

down quite a few times and it was under warranty repair but

fortunately we were out of a washing machine for about a week or so so my mother

kindly happened to help us out and did some washing for us

and I got that in the back of the car, I was travelling down to Cardiff at the time out

to do an event in Cardiff, stopped over in a hotel, and he

had only to come out to the car the next morning to find that the

back window was smashed through, and they'd left all

the expensive work gear and decided to take the two bags of clean washing

that I'd had cleaned, which had my under crackers in and a few other

bits and pieces. So, yeah, if there's anybody out there in Cardiff who

sees anybody begging on the street or anything like that wearing a Thomas Dudley polo

shirt, then, You know, for, well, that corporate

who's there walking around in Mark Thomas Dudley polo shirt

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going to struggle to see him. If

you're over six foot. Thanks, Mark. Yeah, that's

fine. We do have a laugh when we hear that. Yeah, yeah, that's what life's all

Absolutely. You've got to smile. On a semi-serious

note, I suppose, water conservation is

something that obviously you were trying to solve by getting your washing

done, clearly. So it changes

all the time. And I remember when I was growing up water

conservation wasn't something that was even thought about or discussed anywhere. I mean

I grew up in a time where there was no central heating, we had no double glazing. Yeah,

when I rolled out it was real. But it was like the council

houses I lived in, it was very basic. And, you know,

thinking about what you were going to do to conserve water was, that

wasn't even, you know, did I have enough coal to put that on the fire now. But things have

changed a lot now. So, from a business point

of view, and from a sales point of view as well, so how do you keep

up with the changes that are going on in the industry? Because it's moving quite quickly

When I think about it, you're right, things have changed. And yet in

some respects things stay the same. The networks we

support have always been focused on providing

a minimum level of water. But now as you say, the focus is also

on making sure we don't waste water, we don't give too much. So we've

been looking at products recently that will reduce the amount of water to people's

houses. not to the point that the homeowner would notice, but

to prevent overpressure. Overpressure can be quite a serious problem,

it can damage appliances in the home, it can cause

problems with your fittings or your plumbing pipe work, it's often a

cause of plumbing failures in the house. But

it's also a huge waste of water for

the water industry. So managing the correct amount

of water to each property is really important. And that's something that we think we could

I mean the messages that went out were don't leave the tap running while you're brushing your

teeth. All those kind of things that we, you know, as a consumer things that we

can do, you know. So I mean I remember that they

Half a milk bottle I think was one

I think, I mean, I wouldn't really appreciate the logic of putting

a brick in the system, why that would even have any

benefit of saving water, because it makes no... You

put a brick in the system, okay, it saves water. How does putting a brick in the system save

It just halts an amount of water. back from being flushed

essentially. When you've got one of our systems, if you take

one of our Thomas Dudley systems out of the box, it'll come

with two baffle inserts, so systems as

in its raw form would flush six and four litres. If you slot one

baffle in, it will do five and three litres, and it'll do four and 2.6. Essentially,

what the baffles do, Mark, is they just hold a pocket of water back into

that recess. So when the cistern flushes, on

this side of the cistern here, you'll get this pocket of water which will

equate to the leachant water you're going to save. And then as the water rises,

that water then turns back over and it all becomes back into the cistern. So

you're constantly recycling that water within that reservoir essentially. And

you can do that straight out of the box with most of our cisterns, the different varying flushing levels

anyway. of that to your earlier point, I think what's

accelerated the kind of and put people's mind

conscious on this kind of stuff is the water boards now we're introducing a lot,

water meters, new houses are all on water meters, Rob,

and there'll be some of the stuff that you do, so these forced

changes do make people think a little

bit more. They've done it with the electric where you've got your meters

and stuff where you're conscious about the electric using.

It's the same sort of principles on water that they're trying to do with the water fingers and

it won't be long before there's devices which are measuring water

within your house. And then people become a bit more conscious about, and

then they want, and then that's where we come in, where we provide products

which provide solutions to help with water

saving. It's a kind of full circle really, it has to be done from

There's a lot that depends where you live as well at the moment. If you're living in London for instance,

probably water meters are probably a lot more common than if you live out in the countryside. Because I

suppose there is a, you know, the amount of

population growth that London has had, there's probably a

lot more water that's needed through there and stopping leaks and

reducing usage of water can actually save a

huge amount. from the water

system. So I suppose you have to work, Rob, quite closely with

the water companies in order to sort of see things

for the future. Sort of always feeding information backwards and forwards, I

Absolutely. So things you mentioned there, getting

water to travel around the country to be in the right place, that's something

that water companies have been focused a lot on recently. to improve,

to get water where it most needs to be. And from our point of

view, we look a lot at the different forms of renewal. So, 7TREND, for

example, have recently had an initiative called the Green Recovery Program,

where they're taking out old pipes, sometimes even lead pipes,

and replacing them with modern infrastructure that not

only deals with very minor leaks that might be hard to detect by

proactively changing a whole street, of

pipework, but it also future-proofs and sets that

pipework up for the future at the same time. And doing those

sorts of things, they're ensuring that their networks are

I suppose it's like people who paint the fourth road bridge and it gets from one and gets to the other end,

they just go straight back and start painting it again. So I suppose there's probably

so much pipework under the ground now that I suppose it's a task that

is there for decades to come. So I suppose they've got

to get it right now so that in in later years, they

haven't got to read through it and go back through it all again, because

that would be a complete pain for them and for

the general public as well. So, I suppose getting the solution right

and working with people like yourselves, Rob, to make sure that's right is

probably a really good starting point for water companies to

understand that there is solutions to some of these problems. And

if there isn't a solution, there are companies out there like Waterfare who will work

It's all about encouraging people to be brave and to spend the right, make

I think that's a really good way of putting it for companies to be brave because we can all

take the safe route. We can always, you know, find something. Yeah, I

know that works a little bit. I'll just do a little bit more of that without thinking actually,

you know what, we really need to do something different here if we're going to

make a long-term solution. Because companies like

governments can be short-term thinking. Okay, I'm just fixing it for now and now and

now. but rather than thinking long-term, and I think that's it,

it's a great way of looking at it for companies to be brave, and I would advise any

company out there to be brave, take the

step, come and speak to companies like WaterFit, and think, okay, what

can you do to help us out, because we've got a problem. It's

maybe not a massive problem now, but we probably think it's going to be, and I'm sure

And as you say, water companies at the moment, We

tend to only notice when there's something wrong. We tend to only get frustrated with

the problems we see. When I think about the people I meet in the industry

every day, who are out there working on these networks, I

think about their commitment and their enthusiasm and their

passion to make things better. There's a huge amount of

good work going on, but of course we only notice the bits that don't work.

And as with everything, it's like being a salesman, I'm sure. You'll know that you

very rarely get a pat on the back when things get delivered on time and in full, you

That's definitely right, yeah. We're very reactive in

that sense, aren't we? You know, as a country, as a nation and as people,

I suppose, we tend to react to problems rather than proactively look for

solutions, I guess, really. Yeah, and he's very much like

I think governments could do a lot more joined up work with how

things are going. I know they've privatised a lot of the industries, you know, for good

or for bad, depending on what side of the fence you stand on on that. But I think

there's lots of work they can do together. And I think it frustrates everybody. I mean, a good example

of how people, companies don't work together. We

had our roads closed around by where I live for about a week while they, so

in different places while they put new road markings down everywhere. And

literally the day after they'd finished doing all the new road markings, fixed the

road, they came up and dug them up to fit a new pipe. And

I'm thinking, and then when they went off, they just left the tarmac with the part

of it missing and it looked terrible again. you lot must have, someone

could have communicated with some of each other to say, look we're going to be here doing this

at that time. If you come down at the same time, you can get yours done, we

can fill the road, we can have a job and then we haven't got to come back to it and then it's all

nice. But there just seems to be that lack of cohesion at

levels way above ours that sort of almost prevents things

from actually sort of being fixed in the best way and I

don't understand sometimes where that sort of blockage

comes from because I think as companies we try to work as

efficiently as we possibly can because you know we don't

want to spend money we don't need to spend on things we want to make sure we get

it right never gonna be our first time but as close to first time

as we can which is why having a third of the staff for

research and development is a brilliant way for getting innovation over the line.

Absolutely, I think It's tricky, isn't it? Because all

these things come back to communication and

getting different industries to speak to each other, to speak to local councils,

to understand what's going on. The road is

such a simple part of our infrastructure and yet so essential. And

getting all of that right is hard to

Because the road carries a lot more than just traffic, because underneath you've got

pipe works for water, you might have electricity, you might have cables

for cable TV nowadays, all running along underneath the

road. So I think getting it right should really be a priority for

how people are looking at something as simple as, it's something to get me from A

to B when I drive in my car. But reality is, it's a lot more difficult than that.

Absolutely yeah I'd say most definitely I mean coming back to

your point there about like the working together and

that that sort of joined up sort of working you know we're we run

we test all our products that we design in the Thomas Liddy business and

that's Rob Mulder as well he's you know to the nth degree really

they go through life cycling testing we're a RAS and UCAS approved

test centre you know we do a lot of testing that

makes these products really, you know, work in the industry that

they're in and fit for the UK market. But

that joined up thinking's not been joined up at the top end

of it. So, you know, we're losing it there really. So that

needs more joined up working, I would say, definitely, without

And I think if we all manage to do that, some magic, some of them, you

know, wave a magic stick around and we all did that. I think you'd get things

done a lot quicker and a lot better. So hopefully going

forward you never know what's going to happen in the future but I think all we

can do as companies we do our bit as best as we possibly can and they help to

influence what governments do, influence what other

companies do. As I'm sure Rob you do when you speak to

the water companies is just trying to influence them along of you

And I think we often underestimate the value we can add just by

speaking to more people getting out there. And

industries do want to progress and they do need to move forward as well. So

I think there is actually quite a positive future ahead of

us for the water industry through innovation

and through companies like WaterFit across the country doing

their bit to support the companies that are out there providing that service.

I think people should realise water, it's a finite, although it falls from the sky, it's

still a finite resource. There isn't, I think there isn't any more drinking

water, fresh water drinking water available now than there was hundreds of years ago,

it stayed round about the same. So I think it's that sense of, you

know, we need to look after it. We need to make sure that from

everything that we do as companies, to how we manage water on

our own sites, to how people

use it at home, anything they can do, and how people look after the

infrastructure that it goes in. Things like the multi-fit I think is

a great example of how innovation can actually save time,

effort, and money for companies

just by fitting one product that can actually do an awful lot more than what

people think it's going to do. Yeah, that's a product that does that

actually. It has a more wider knock-on effect to people

Absolutely. I mean, to give you an example, with multi-fit, one of the key

things we brought through recently is a new innovation. We've developed a

version that can cut through cast iron and ductile iron pipework, which is obviously

a lot more challenging. Now, the traditional way to do that is using

what's called a drilling and tapping system. And that can take up to 20 minutes.

With a particularly tricky or old pipe, it might even take longer. And

at the end of that process, the product they put in

afterwards has to screw into this small section

of pipe that may be of varying quality. It takes

a lot of skill and a certain amount of luck to

make sure that that fitting will stay for a long time. The multi-fit product,

by comparison, will easily have a 50-year life and

should, in theory, last longer than that. But most importantly, the

drilling process is reduced from 20 odd minutes to between 30 seconds

Wow, you see that to water companies? A long time to

30 seconds and last 50 years. That's a good point. But

it's things like that that for a company who is sending people out, get

it done in a fraction of the time, that saves not

only their money and effort, but also the sort of disruption to

Absolutely, and when you're talking about roads, one

of the key things we get is feedback from our water company customers is, they

are acutely aware of the disruption they cause in the road network.

It's a big problem for them. Getting licenses, urgent

licenses, to access roads where there's an

immediate need isn't always simple. And

the sooner they can get off-site, the better for them. So products that

save them time in that installation repair

A quick one for you, Ant. This is a

little bit light hearted now, but what's the strangest or funniest requests or

I mean, you must have had, I mean, I used to hear whether they've asked you for a product

that doesn't exist, or they're blaming you for the failure of a comfort product

Yeah, I mean, it's always kind of nice when you get that kind

of irate call saying, you know, your product's failed, you know,

and really kind of laying it on

thick with you, and then you get there and find out it's actually your competitor's

product, which is always quite a nice thing to walk into, to be honest, and

that has happened quite a few times. There's

the general installation errors where

people are screaming and shouting at you and you'll get out to somewhere and go, well

yeah, the reason it's not working is because you've got the reduced flush

tube on the full flush. yet vice versa, quite

a simple thing but people get run quite a lot, I guess, you know. And the

daft things like people always saying like, your

flush pipe never come with your system. Well, as we photograph

everyone that comes out, so we do know it comes with it. We prefer people just to ring

Nine times out of ten, we'll send another one because we're quite good

in that sense. We understand that things go wrong. We just don't like when

people try and say, it's our problem. It's better

to be honest in that sense anyway, Mark. So quite a bit of that really. Just

a few. funny customers over the years,

really. The ones that you walk into for the first

time, you feel like you're never going to get anywhere

with them at all. Then suddenly, you persevere

with them. Then two or three days down the line, they're

buying stuff from you. You've got a good working partnership there,

really, to be honest. We do try and form more

working partnerships with customers more so than the

sale. The kind of products that we sell at

Thomas Dudley are long-term ongoing sales

products. They're not something that we sell to you today and

then we're gone tomorrow. Ours is very much a long-term

sales process really. Have you ever pocket dialed a customer? Not

for this podcast. It's got to be a story. I'm

wondering what you know, Mark. I

know a few people who have, who are no longer with our business,

and let's say they did run into our IT

department and ask how to solve this problem

quite quickly. And

I'm not going to name any specifics there. I'm sure we would have enjoyed

that particular story. Definitely not, no. I'm not throwing anybody

Well done. From a salesperson's point of view, have

you ever tried using a sales pitch to get out of a... a problem at home or

Steve Diggins Yeah, unfortunately, the speeding ticket never works, which I

found out recently, unfortunately. Yeah, sometimes

I do have to sort of think, how

would I sell this to a customer? And then I try and think how

I'd sell that to my wife to get her something. Yeah,

it never works. Yeah, I'm as bad as good as it is sales, really,

That's something that applies to all of us, because I'm certainly not the boss when I get home. Yeah,

exactly. I do occasionally get reminded not to use my managing and

Yeah, your psychology training's not going to work on me. I see right through

Just a quick final couple of questions. Waterfix is doing a bit of a rebrand? Yes.

I know you're starting to roll that out, so I bet you're all excited

Absolutely, yeah. We're just getting ready to roll it out at the moment. It

was something that we wanted to do for a while, and really

it's just to reflect the change of the company as we grow. We've

got a strategy that we're working on internally that governs

a route forward for us to the mid 2030s, and really

Cool, and if people want to come find out about Waterfitt, where

Go to www.waterfitt.co.uk. Cool,

So, first of all, I'd like to

thank you both for coming on the show. And

I think that it's really interesting to

hear about what you guys do over in Waterfitt, because although we

all work on the same site, we don't always sort of get to

find some of the detail out occasionally of it. And I think some of the innovation, out

of the 30 staff on innovation, I didn't know that. I think that's quite impressive. And

I think that, you know, being able to sort of turn an

idea into a product relatively quickly that works I

think is a really sort of, it's a good measuring stick to have for

a company that you're able to do that. I think that's really impressive. And

That's great. So I'd just like to say thanks

to Rob Hewells from WaterFit and Ant McDonough from Thomas

Dudley. So if you enjoyed this podcast, please

hit the like and subscribe buttons from wherever they are on the screen, depending

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follow Thomas Dudley. You can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Annex.

So until the next episode of Dudley Unplugged, I'm Mark Morris. Thank