Chris Ong: ‘Integrate water initiatives into economic development agendas’
Chris Ong, Principal at Roland Berger, has global experience across the water and utilities landscape. He discusses the need for Asian countries to align water initiatives with economic growth, adopt technology wisely, reinvest efficiency gains, and address systemic bottlenecks.
Based in Malaysia, Chris Ong works closely with both public and private utilities across the entire value chain, supporting them in optimising operations, accelerating growth, and assessing strategic investments. He leads the Water and Operations Capability of Roland Berger in Southeast Asia, where he spearheads initiatives with industry players and governments.
How important is aligning water initiatives with broader market growth strategies to ensure long-term impact?
Aligning water initiatives with broader market strategies is critical to ensuring long-term impact, as access to water underpins industrial growth, urbanisation, and community wellbeing. By integrating water initiatives into economic development agendas, they become both sustainable and transformative.
Some regional examples include NRW reduction programmes in Malaysia’s Penang and Klang Valley to support industrial expansion, Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTP) in Ho Chi Minh tied to industrial zones to ensure compliance and reduce river pollution, and PPP projects in the Philippines designed for ecozone growth.
What are the limitations of technology in accelerating operational transformation in the water sector?
Technology is powerful but not a silver bullet. Whilst the benefits may be clear for one operator, it may not represent the same benefit for another; hence, a healthy level of skepticism is justified. Its impact is often hindered by legacy infrastructure, capability gaps, data quality, and affordability challenges. True transformation requires not only digital tools but also strong governance and workforce readiness.
Examples of these challenges include reliability issues with older technologies such as smart meters, skills gaps that limit the ability to fully realise the benefits of AI-driven leak detection, and the high cost of IT and SCADA systems. These factors contribute to slower adoption and ultimately affect the ability to transform.
How can organisations balance operational efficiency gains with maintaining service quality and customer satisfaction?
Efficiency must be balanced with customer trust, and savings should be reinvested into network reliability, service quality, and customer-centric improvements. Tracking both cost and service KPIs provides an effective mechanism to channel efficiency savings into the right parts of the network to meet the specific needs of customers and communities. It also creates transparency, allowing customers to see the impact of reinvestment and, in turn, strengthening trust.
Such reinvestment can take many forms, ranging from public trust campaigns, such as those supporting the acceptance of NEWater in Singapore, to more traditional initiatives like network replacement aimed at reducing NRW.
From your experience, what operational bottlenecks most commonly limit efficiency in water utilities?
Common bottlenecks include limited financial budgets, high-priority issues such as NRW, fragmented systems, underinvestment in preventive maintenance, skill shortages, and inefficient procurement. These challenges undermine both the financial and operational performance of water utilities.
Many solutions can address these gaps, with digital and AI serving as major enablers. They not only help create visibility but can also perform a significant portion of the work rapidly, enabling human operators to review the outputs and make better-informed faster decisions.
What are the emerging trends that you believe will shape water sector transformation over the next decade?
In my view, the main emerging trends include digital transformation across the whole value chain, which is required to support improved community outcomes and economic growth. There will also be an increase in the decentralised reuse of water, which will go from ‘encouraged to welcomed’ as the availability, access, and cost of water become more challenging.
Water players are already partners in cross-sector initiatives and will have a greater role to play in energy, agriculture, and the major growth area of data centres. Sustainability is a core principle for all activities, with increased internal enforcement beyond national policies.
