with 🎙️ Anthony DUSOVIC – Vice-President Strategic Projects @ SUEZ in North America
💧 SUEZ in North America is the US’ second-largest environmental services firm.
What we covered:
🍏 Back to the roots: Why do we treat water? And what are the challenges that the water industry still needs to address?
🍏 What are #PFAS compounds and how are they regulated? Is it a major concern or the latest trend?
🍏 How can one treat them? Which routes does SUEZ currently explore?
🍏 On a broader level, what are Utilities’ future challenges?
🔥 … and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥
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Resources:
➡️ Send your warm regards to Anthony Dusovic on LinkedIn
is on Linkedin ➡️
Full Transcript:
These are computer generated, so expect some typos 🙂
Antoine Walter:
Hi, Anthony, welcome to the show. I’m very happy to have you. It’s been a while since I didn’t talk with you. So it’s good to have this podcast as an occasion to exchange thoughts with you. And let me start with a new Europe and joke. You know, we are recording that on the 6th of November and to my knowledge, you still don’t have a president, right?
Anthony Dusovic:
Well, we do have a president, but we don’t know who our president will be in January of 2021. So this is going to take awhile. You know, this is a process. This is a new process into the world of COVID. It’s a, certainly a test of many things, you know, be it politics process and everything else. And look, we’ll see, you know, all we can do is wait and see. It’s like waiting for your child to be born. You don’t know which day it’ll usually happen. You just wait and see,
Antoine Walter:
You’ve actually mentioned that there were the COVID, how is it on your end of the word? Are you also working from home? And like we do doing that daily Europe. Yes.
Anthony Dusovic:
We shut down our office early in March. And the majority of us who are not considered, I hate to use the word. We’re not essential employees, but we don’t need to be out in the field or operating a plant are working from home. You know, we’ll talk a little bit about the business, but you know, our utilities are essential services that we provide water and wastewater services, and we need to make sure operations run. So we did a lot of work in the background, ensuring our supply chains were strong, ensuring that managing, you know, who’s getting sick, who’s not getting sick. We were quite successful. We had a very, very low incidents in Suez, North America of COVID cases. And people worked, you know, when a main break happens, people are out getting the job done. We really tested the resilience of the organization and the people who work in the organization. So, you know, overall though, we are in a hotspot, as you know, you know, I’m in the New York area, you know, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, this is the, what we call the tri-state area. So there were restrictions and you know, personal restrictions some work restrictions, but things marched on. So it was a great Testament to the will of a lot of people.
Antoine Walter:
That’s the positive way to look at things. Well, you’ve been slightly touching the, the elements of your role and your managing aspect, but I was just curious about your path, if I’m right, you’re coming from a technical background and you eventually made it if I might say so to management roles, can you maybe tell us what were the steps?
Anthony Dusovic:
Absolutely. To understand the bit about my steps. I think you need to understand a little bit about where we come from in the world of Suez. So I know a lot of people know the company, but as many of your audience know, Suez is a global group, about 90,000 people, strong, you know, our purpose is shaping a sustainable environment. Now the vision of the companies to be an agile leader in environmental services by 2030. Now this doesn’t necessarily mean we want to be the biggest company by revenue or by size, but concretely it means three main things. One is we want to be a partner of choice for customers with innovative solutions and technologies. We want to remain a pioneer and solve the planet’s greatest challenges. Our company, whether in the U S or in France has a long history in France. You know, we were the original developers of the Suez canal here in the U S we started as the Hackensack water company of 1859.
And we want to focus on our three main strong activities, water waste, and smart environmental solutions. It’s kind of interesting that in different parts of the world, people see Suez or think of Suez as a different company or different sets of expertise. You know, for example, in some parts of the world, we’re known as a waste management and recycling services company. In other parts of the world, we’re known as an equipment technology provider or a water concessionaire. If I bring this back home to the United States, people know us as a technology company, which was obviously reinforced by the acquisition of GE water and they know us quite well as an operations and maintenance operator. In fact, what I always find really interesting is that here in the U S we are one of the top three of 13 major investor owned, also known as regulated, what are utility companies?
And we serve as the water company for over 2 million people. I needed to tell you that because that ties back to my career. So I started, as you know, we worked together for some years. I started in the technology side of the business. I sold equipment and sold technologies to utilities be they municipal or private utilities. One of one of my customers was company called United water, which is Suez water regulated utilities today. So I was always intrigued by the regulated business model. It’s really a in terms of business, it’s a really interesting model, a little bit different than what we’re used to. So because of this width and broad depth of Suez, I was able to move on over, to understand both the supplier side of the business and get the three 60 view as the owner side of the business as well, which is a great opportunity to working in a large company like this.
So you asked a question about my technical background. Yeah. I started as an engineer. I actually started my career in the defense industry. We were doing radar systems for jet fighters, and about seven years at a school, I moved over into the environmental field and I kind of never looked back. So I started with a little company called [inaudible] at the time, which was partly owned by Suez and partly owned by another major industrial company called [inaudible]. I grew through that company. Had a lot of great opportunities. I started in project management and eventually became the CEO of the Americas. Is it a typical path in our industry? I think in the large organization industry, it is a pathway. You can start as an engineer and work your way into management. I think there’s other ways to get where you want to get as well in our industry. You know, there’s plenty of folks who are doing things like in private equity, smaller startup type business. There’s a lot of disruption in our industry going on now with all these tiny little startups, you know, seeded venture capital, private equity, and so on, but I’d say it’s what you make of it
Antoine Walter:
I’m interested in what you just said about the startups, because I don’t know if I wasn’t watching before, when I was working for Suez, I had the impression you will have the big groups and I didn’t see that those startups around and over the past couple of years, you’re right. I think there’s, there’s really something happening about disruption, about startups entering that field. What’s your take on that? Do you think that’s the future of our industry to have those startups around them and to have them disrupt Suez and the likes,
Anthony Dusovic:
You know, from the disruption point of view? I think I see it as a couple of ways. I see it as potentially disrupting some areas, but potentially complimenting other areas. You know, a lot of, a lot of the goals of the startup companies aren’t necessarily to become the biggest water treatment company or the biggest technology company. We could talk about digital because I think there’s a lot there. I think a lot of the goals of these companies are to provide something very unique and then have a big attractive company with a lot of mass in our industrial environment, acquire the technology let’s say, or partner on the technology and really create more value added. So I think there’s room for both. And I think innovation is driven by that world. And I think it’s also a generational thing. There’s a new generation of young people coming out of schools and coming into the workforce. And they’re used to things like hackathons and design sprints, and all this wonderful stuff. Whereas, you know, our industry had followed the old consulting engineering model where you start with a plan and then you do some assessment and then you do some alternatives and then you do designs and then you go on and on and on and on. So I think it’s great for the industry. And I think it’s great for the future.
Antoine Walter:
I’m sorry, because I took you to a sidetrack, but it was interested by this startup and disruption aspect because it really, I think that’s, that’s something which is happening right now, but let’s circle back to you. What’s your role?
Anthony Dusovic:
Sure. So today I am part of the utility regulated utility side of Suez. And here in North America, I am the vice president of special projects. I’m working on two main initiatives to help the utility out. I’ll talk about one of them today. Mainly one is really helping our procurement teams do some process improvements and manage vendor resilience and vendor risk. The other is helping the company deal with the issue facing pretty much at least the United States and other parts of the world is which is basically getting ready to deal with PFS regulations.
Antoine Walter:
So actually you teased it. PFS is going to be our deep dive for today. Let me start. I have to be negative sometimes. You know, I’m very positive on that podcast, but let me be now the devil advocate back in the time where you and I were working at, Zunia the big topic around those micro pollutions in the U S was one, four dioxane. At that time in Europe, they were regulations about micro pollutants, especially in Switzerland. And then there was big discussions around endocrine disruptors. There was microplastics, heavy metals and all that stuff, and now it’s be fast. So now if really I was to be, I said, I’m the devil’s advocate, but is it a trend? Is it is to fashion or do you think there’s a real problem with PFS?
Anthony Dusovic:
That’s a good question. So if I go backwards in time a little bit and say we as a world community have probably dealt with the most, I’ll call it the low hanging fruit. We’ve cleaned up the water and the environment in areas where you drink some water, you get sick you’re so, you know, you have to run to the bathroom or you die. We’ve we’ve done those very basic fundamental things very well. So they very apparent, you know, that they have those health effects. They were immediate. You can see an immediate payback by doing treatments and so on. Fast-Forward we’ve got, what do we have? We have technology, which is improved. We can measure things to levels that were unheard of years ago. I mean, we’re measuring P foster the parts per trillion range. That’s one, number two, we’re looking at things and trying to figure out, you know, what these health effects really are out into the future.
Cause they may not be as apparent today for us. So is P facet thing. I think there’s science says it’s a thing was one, four doc sign a thing. Yeah, I think that was the thing too. The question is with so many things that we can measure today, which thing is the most important thing at what cost and what technology do you have available to purify or remove some of these things. And, you know, you have to kind of pick and choose. And of course, on top of that, there’s an industry and regulatory framework around all these chemicals and compounds and things that kind of have a force to play. If I could say that
Antoine Walter:
You mentioned the regulation aspect, I did my homework just before our discussion. I was checking what is regulated in the U S and the only thing I found is PFA and PFS. And if I’m right, PFS is about almost 5,000 different compounds. So is it right that you have two which are regulated and why only two?
Anthony Dusovic:
Good question. So you talk about 5,000 compounds. That that is a fact, you know, PFO, PFO S in some areas like New Jersey, we have a limit on PFNA as well. Those are the long chain compounds. Basically they were deemed early on. They were the, I’ll say they were the original develop compounds. And there was research and study then on them by the EPA sometime ago, because they were health effects. You know, I go back to Hoosick falls, New York in 20,014, or so there were all these lawsuits and all these health effects found. They were the first ones to be limited because they were the first ones to be looked at by the EPA, the new ones, the shorter chain, and the ones that have come since they claim have less health effects. But we don’t really know. So the question is 5,000 compounds. The EPA has very strict mandates on how it does its evaluation timeframe, number of contaminants and so on. So there’s a process that you can’t really test 5,000 compounds at once. And do you have the technology to test all these 5,000 compounds for some really better or some worse, what are the compound effect? So there’s a lot of questions. So I think you have to start somewhere is ultimately the answer. And that somewhere happens to be basically PFO PFS. And to some extent, PS,
Antoine Walter:
You mentioned New Jersey to have this additional component, which is regulated. Is it really only New Jersey, or do you have all the areas in the States where by the federal aspect, you would have a different compound regulated there that would not be regulated here?
Anthony Dusovic:
That’s actually a good regulatory question. So there’s a couple of things at play here. One is where’s the research and the science on a compound. So the EPA is a federal agency or a federal body that basically tries to create their mission, was to try to create a uniform standard of water quality, basically throughout the nation. There’s an issue of course, of state’s rights as well. You know, the essence of the U S constitution was States versus federal rights. So PFS, you know, the main concentrations are around industrial areas, folks who produced and use these chemicals and military basis. So once the EPA sets a guideline and you know, there’s a bit of a nuance there, the States basically requirement is to set guidelines, at least as stringent. They can’t be less stringent, but they certainly can be more stringent. So, yeah, there’s flexibility too, to set your regulation based on what you see. But for example, a state like New Jersey, isn’t going to pick PFN just on their own. There’s going to be some science behind it. There probably be some regulatory research from the U S EPA and other and other bodies as well.
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Antoine Walter:
The federal regulation has to be then translated locally, which sounds a bit like, like it works in Europe. You know, there was this water framework directive in the year 2000, and we are thinking 2020 and parts of that framework directive are still not translated into every state. So is it similar in the UK?
Anthony Dusovic:
Yes, absolutely. To some extent, you know, you’ve basically, if the EPA sets a regulation like right now, if we stick to the PFAS situation, the EPA is only set. What’s called a health advisory level, Hal out at 70 parts per trillion, that is not a regulatory enforceable limit that’s notification that says, Hey, you know, your water may contain chemicals to this limit, which we believe may be hazardous to your health. So now the States in this regard had the opportunity to stay with the Hal only provide health advisories or create regulatory limits on their own certain States, which have been noted to have of course, industrial areas, military bases, and so on. I have created their limits, New York and New Jersey. So I talked about those States because they are States that are in our territory. If I could say that. So we’re focusing on those States, but you know, Michigan as well, a lot of manufacturing, California, you know, others. So there’s a wide variety of what people are doing around the country around this issue.
Antoine Walter:
I’m curious, just because you mentioned the military and I know that’s one of your field of expertise. What exactly is the military doing, which is generating PFS. Yeah. So they invented
Anthony Dusovic:
These wonderful compounds called firefighting foams. So basically on the military sites, they did two things. They did firefighting trainings. And if you have a runway where you have an airplane crashing, skidding out, whatever the case, you might have a fire, you basically, you flood the area with these foams. They immediately put out the fire and they were super, super efficient in that regard. What makes these such a challenge to treat is the fact that they’re so effective in what they do, right? So firefighting foams have been the number one issue around military bases and the federal government around the military basis is looking at another subset of P phos as well, in addition, and not to get into all the details. But yeah, so there are different things are being looked at by different priority.
Antoine Walter:
From the consumer point of view, I’ve read that some associations have said that they would like to see a regulation, which says PFS is bent in the sense that you should not have more than one part per trillion. And I guess for the 4,700 compounds, which sounds ambitious, how do you come to a deal between consumers and utilities because there’s a regulation, but there’s also the fact that of the end user, a CTE or a utility in general, they might have to find a way which might be a both.
Anthony Dusovic:
Yeah, absolutely. So that’s a good question. So when you talk about 5,000 different types of compounds, the question is, does one treatment serve all of them? We know, for example, that the long chain [inaudible] and the short chain aren’t necessarily treated to the same extent by using activated carbon, maybe after use it ion exchange, maybe you have to go to our own. Maybe you have to go to other techniques. So the question is, how do you solve the issue of 5,000 compounds that are in the water? If we don’t have the science yet, it’s really hard to say I’d like to get here. And then the other question is, are all of these 5,000 issue? Is there a combined effect between soda? Is that there’s a lot of science. I think that has an answer to the question. And then you talk about going to one PP T right?
We’re talking parts per trillion, PFS, isn’t just in firefighting foams. It isn’t just in your thousand dollar waterproof ski suit and all these wonderful things where, you know, what makes these compounds again. So good is the fact that you don’t lose your waterproof on your jacket after one season, right? It’s a great, it’s a miracle from the what application it’s trying to solve. But on the other hand, you know, this stuff it’s in the carpets, you know, you have stain resistant carpets, you have children. It’s funny, there’s like 97, maybe even 98, 99% of the world has found that if you test yourself, there’s probably pee FOS in your bloodstream or develops in lands in some of your organs. The question is, is it killing everybody? I don’t know. You know, that’s the unknown,
Antoine Walter:
There might be parts in our blood, but when it comes to finance at the top, I guess not in the same concentration than in our blood, I hope so. I’ve seen that about 10% of drinking water supplies in the U S might be affected by PFS. And I was wondering as soon as you face, those are parts or at least a portion of those 10% part of what you’re dealing every day.
Anthony Dusovic:
The answer to your question is I think it could be more than 10% of, of the water supplies. You know, it’s an interesting, and let me give you some for instances too, you know, you have an, a lot of the, you know, a lot of these things are being banned and will change in the future, but you have a fire on a roadway. Two cars have an accident. There’s a fire. The fire department comes, they spray all this foam down, get rid of the fire, clean up, spray it all down. And it goes into the year storm basins. It goes through your sewer systems and lo and behold, it’s in your water supply, right? Groundwater or surface water reservoirs. What have you? So the question is, you know, you start reading something, is it a trend? Does it, you know, there’s airborne, it can float through the air, excuse me.
So there’s so many ways. So the question is, do we really know? I, you know, I don’t know exactly what percent I think I would argue it’s higher than 10%. So do we, as a company have PFS in our water? Yes. So we’ve obviously been looking at our systems and doing a lot of testing and have noted that there are some systems that have be fast specifically. One system in one of our States had a PFS. We immediately got a mobile unit in place. It was a smaller system, was actually a well system. We immediately got a rental unit, a mobile treatment unit in place. We ran it, we saw the results were working really well. We turned it into a full-time treatment and we solved the problem there. So I’d argue that there’s going to be a lot of it as these regulations, mature and develop and compliance, regulatory sampling takes place. The question is dealing with it.
Antoine Walter:
How do you actually deal with it? How do you treat it? What do you use?
Anthony Dusovic:
That’s a great question. So basically they are currently, and a lot of the technology people kill me for this, but there’s basically today, there’s three. What we call best available or very common technologies that are proven. There’s granular, activated carbon, there’s ion exchange resins. And there’s basically reverse osmosis. The industry is dealing with it. Those who needed, you know, to do something and using today’s technology that we know works, that is not creating a new problems from the treatment of volume of view. There’s other problems we can talk about later, but are using these, these three technologies now, which technology use is highly dependent on your application and what you’re trying to solve for you may go, you know, granular activated carbon, probably the most common with [inaudible] the second and aro being third. And, you know, the reason our row is most likely third is because it’s got a lot of pressure that’s required.
So if you have a major plant and you need to distribute water to your customers, through their pipes at a certain minimum pressure, which is regulated as well, and you put these massive tanks in place, you’ve got a head loss issue. So you need to deal with that. So you need to create a, of pumping that pumping creates a lot of additional costs and usage of energy and so on and so forth. So it’s about finding the right application for the right problem. Now, these three technologies create their own problems. What do you do with spent the carbon resins, you know, concentrated waste streams from aro we could talk about. So the industry is working really hard to look for a complete destruction type technology. You know, as we, we worked years ago on AOP type processes, we were trying to totally destroy micro pollutants. The question is, what are you converting things into? Are you completely destroying or creating new forms? So, so there’s a lot of research going on in that field now that will be the future. I think if somebody finds the right solution there or when they find the right solution to actually, I think we’re all racing for that solution as well,
Antoine Walter:
It’s going to be a one size fits all, or there will be a solution suited to every type of family of PFS.
Anthony Dusovic:
I think there’ll be different solutions for different families of P phos. Ultimately, if we had to put a system in place today, we’d be looking at putting in granular activated carbon or ion exchange resins in drinking water. For example, if we put in our row, you know, you strip everything out of drinking water, right? If you put our own, you have this ultrapure water in a drinking water plant that could have some negative effects. You know, you’ve got areas that have older pipes pipes with lead. We’ve got a lead and copper rule here in the United States, and you might be stripping out things like minerals that prevent against corrosion and expose lead back into the water stream, for example. So it’s not a, it’s not a one size fits all solution for sure. It’s definitely an engineered solution. And I think that engineered solution really, and companies are working on it as well as we are doing research on happens to be a destruction technology as well.
Antoine Walter:
You mentioned the activated carbon and you mentioned the micro pollutants as well. It’s pretty interesting because if I compare it to, to how it’s dealt in Europe, you have countries which says they want to regulate micro pollutants from the drinking water. So that’s, to that extent, it’s pretty similar to what you’re doing with PFS, but you have other countries like Switzerland, which says, what is it is a cycle at the end of the day. So if you remove it from the wastewater, you also remove it for the environment in between. And then when it comes back to drinking water, you free of those compounds and what they use half of the time might be ozone, but the other half of the time is activated carbon. So it’s, it’s similar technologies. So why would you concentrate on drinking water when it comes to removing PFS what’s wastewater treatment alternative?
Anthony Dusovic:
Well, you’ve just hit on the next big nerve and the next big trend actually. So the safe drinking water act regulates water, the clean water act regulates what you could put back into a body of water. So as drinking water regulations here in the U S are forming, the next question is what happens to your wastewater systems, right? Can we just inject this pee, fast water into there and you create two problems. One is you’re releasing potentially PFS late in water, into your, you know, through your outfalls and back into the rivers lakes stream ground. What have you, the other is, we’ve got a big business here called biosolids, right where we take the sludge and we process it and we turn it into fertilizers and composts and we feed animals with it and we grow farms with it and so on and so forth.
So what happens to sludge that has P foster remaining and it, it gets spread. So you basically never break the cycle. So that is absolutely part of the equation. Why it’s currently being driven by the water side of the business, I believe has to do number one with the regulation, because it’s the safe drinking water act regulation, not the clean water act regulation. I think the other issue is also to try to reduce the use of some of these chemicals. You know, these are forever chemicals, they’re produced industrially, and if we could reduce their usage, obviously you could reduce ultimately what you have to treat too as well. But that’ll be a long time coming because they’ve been in use for, you know, 70, 80 years to some extent. But yeah. So I want to say on the, on the wastewater front, absolutely that’s that is coming
Antoine Walter:
You’re in charge of special projects, right? So PFS today is still a special project at some point, I guess it has to transfer to something which is daily business. If that really comes to be daily business, actually, I mean, it’s, it’s in the name, how do you handle those, those special projects today?
Anthony Dusovic:
It was really an extension of our capital improvement program. So, you know, a regulated utility has to put together, you know, short, medium and long-term capital plans, right? And those capital plans include everything we do, whether it’s fixing pipes, fixing hydrants, replacing, and fixing plants, increasing service territory by extending pipes and so on PFS because it’s such a large program in itself and implications are around all of our utilities. The company decided to take an olive Suez approach, I’ll call it. So it’s not special in the fact that it’s something that’s unique and one-off, it’s special in the effect that it’s a large program that sits side by side with our normal capital process. And we’re not only working in collaboration with typical engineering firms and contractors, we’re working with our Cersei, our research labs around the world. And of course our WTS colleagues who are technology providers and coming up with a Suez solution, if I could say that to address not only our utilities, but the market.
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Antoine Walter:
So does that mean that you are able, as soon as, as, as one of these giants of that word of at Waterworld, are you able to have everything in-house or do you also partner externally? You mentioned the startups, for instance, would it be possible for a startup to come with a very clever take on PFS and then you would be partnering with them?
Anthony Dusovic:
Yeah, I mean, you know, Suez looks at innovation, you know, we look at as, as open innovation, right? We don’t have to believe that we are the only ones who can invent something and it’s got to come out of our lab. I think the world has basically proven that open innovation is the way to really be innovative. So all of the above is an option. You know, Suez has a venture called Suez ventures, which tries to invest in seed level companies and then potentially decide if they want to acquire more fully acquire or, you know, let go of these investments. So I think all those options are available and on the table. So as has got a lot of experience treating water, for example, on the GAC front granular activated carbon front, you know, we’re not a carbon producer provider, but we’re a process expert, same with IEX, we’re not producing our own resin, but we are certainly a, a, a process expert there as well. And aro, you know, when we acquired GE we became one of the biggest aro companies in the world. So we have that technology in house. So I say it’s a bit of all of the above.
Antoine Walter:
And what about the costs? I guess that’s, if you’re adding an ROI step, which is now the extreme case, if I get your rights, but same with an exchange and an activated carbon to a lesser extent, but that has an impact on costs. So does that mean that with your other hats where you’re trying to bring more efficiency, you can compensate your hats, where you are bringing more treatment capacity, or does that mean that at some point there’s going to be a price increase,
Anthony Dusovic:
Two sides of Suez, right? One is the technology provider. You like the fact that you may sell a lot of equipment to utilities over the next few years. I mean, regulation typically drives our industry, right? The other is a regulated utility where we’re the water company and we have a duty to do prudent investment means that you need to make sure that you’re protecting your customer, your rate payer, and making sure they’re not paying more for the service than they should. So I think Suez on both regards, you know, if you come up with a solution that is the best cost solution from the life cycle costs, customer bill side, that certainly is an impact to customer bill. I can’t see how you would, you know, add more treatment and not have an impact to a customer bill. That just, that’s pretty natural in that regard, but how can you minimize that and give them water at the, you know, basically right. Level of compliance, balancing Outbacks, CapEx, you know, total cost of ownership type of thing. So in that regard, yeah, I think Suez is probably well positioned to help find those solutions as well.
Antoine Walter:
How can I understand this special project aspect? Does that mean that you’re gonna develop that actually like an internal startup you, you would be growing the solution? I don’t know if my analogy is right, but it would be growing the solution up to the point where it can be industrialized, Suez, white, and then you would pick another topic.
Anthony Dusovic:
This particular one, I am working on behalf of the utility to help drive and look for solutions that help our rate payer achieve compliance at the best cost to our rate payer and protection for our customer. WTS is on the side of us, basically looking for solutions that may be our goal beyond Suez internal, and could become a business, you know, create a larger business cakes. And those two things, you know, I think they go pretty well hand in hand in that regard. So I don’t know if I’m answering your, but you know, we have a need we have on both fronts, you know, one is a utility. The other is a supplier and maybe we could solve two problems with one. Suez is in a kind of a unique situation among water companies or environmental companies around the world is that we happen to have treatment facilities that we own. So we have the water, we have the operators, we have to data analysis, the water quality folks, and we have technologies. So we marry those two together. We can create winning advantages. You know, you remember the old days where we had to go to, you know, clients and beg them to take a pilot or rent the pilot to them, try to get some results, hope they share. And so on. Well, right here, right now, we’ve got an opportunity, which is a little different than that. So we’re going to try to leverage it
Antoine Walter:
If I’m reframing my question. I think it was kind of crystal ball question. Let’s say we’re five years down the line and you’ve worked so well with the internal stakeholders and external partners that PFS is now considered something that can be part of daily business. What would be the next challenge that you have to pick up in this, a us utility world?
Anthony Dusovic:
I see what you’re saying. So very good question. There’s so many challenges in utilities. One is the amount of infrastructure work that’s required versus the amount of capital that’s available. So that’s a challenge is always looking for better solutions, which are cost-effective and technically effective. I think, you know, if I look at the industry as a whole, let’s say, you know, the big challenge going forward is going to be, and it’s a subject we could talk about, you know, as two podcasts or three, maybe, but it’s really the, the development of the digital utility.
Antoine Walter:
I think there you’re touching a nerve, but I think if we start discussing the digital utility, I definitely think where we have to risk a doula, a second podcast. I agree. I agree. That’s actually a good idea. Let’s take that one and put it aside. So the digital utility is one aspect, but when you you’re mentioning all of that is its utility and infrastructure in the, in the sense of the networks or in, in the sense of the treatment plans, what is the next big thing?
Anthony Dusovic:
So I think it ties into a little bit of both, but if I focus on the networks, this is kind of where the digital utility does become important. So we won’t focus on the digital piece, but we’ll focus on, you know, we’ve got thousands of miles of pipeline in our own utilities, nevermind how many are in, you know, around the nation and around the world, there are more and more sensors going into these pipelines. There are decisions to be made that we know the characteristics of pipe, the age we’ve got this huge database of pipe. The question is, how do you choose? Where do you put your money to replace the next section of pipe or refurbish? The next asset that provides the best value? Right? I mean, we could look at something and say, Hey, this is the oldest pipe. Let’s replace it back.
That’s not necessarily the answer. Or this is the type of pipe that was very failure prone because it was built in a certain timeframe and it’s at a certain material. We should replace that. That’s part of the answer too, but it’s not the whole answer. So it’s, how do you take all these scenarios and do something that humans on spreadsheets can’t do right now to do all the, what if analysis use machine learning to help make the best decision? So, yeah, networks is absolutely a challenge here in the U S and we’ve been ramping up our efforts on network rehabilitation and renewal for quite awhile plants. You know, some of it is general operations and maintenance and other is what other regulations come down the line. You know, you typically don’t add treatment when you’re basically fully compliant, you’re producing good quality water, and there’s no regulation in place.
Antoine Walter:
You know what, that’s the perfect teaser. So I’m going to stop that, but for now, and then propose it to switch to the rapid fire questions. And I promise you just after we close this episode, we have to find the date because I definitely want to discuss digital utility with you.
Rapid Fire Questions:
Antoine Walter:
Within the rapid fire questions. It’s simple rule, short questions, aiming for short answers. Of course I don’t cut the microphone. So don’t feel restricted if you need to explain a bit what you’re saying, and you’re going to see that the one talking the most is going to be me like always, but my first question would be what is the most exciting project that you’ve been working on and why?
Anthony Dusovic:
There’s two things I need to talk about. One is when I took over and led ozone, we added a three-year plan to nearly double the growth of the company. And we did that. So that was absolutely a fantastic and exciting time in my career. And then I think for most people who work at ozone yet second is when I moved over to, to utility world, I was asked to start up a new business where we provide utility services to the United States military.
It was a business. We knew nothing about we had utility references as a municipal owner, but we knew nothing about the client. And it was really exciting developing a new client base, developing a reputation and getting, and developing some traction with this new customer. So the reason I get excited about those things is I love the growth story. I love the leadership story and I love developing new business. That sounds awesome. I mean, I don’t know how much you can say about what you did with the military, because, you know, I’ve seen all those Hollywood movies. So I knew that maybe 90% of it is secret, but just if you had to pitch it in just one phrase, what was it about? The military has a mission, which we know very well. Our job was to help the military focus on their mission and bringing our expertise into focus on ours, crystal clear. So that’d be good to the next one. What’s your favorite part of your current job? Very good question. So I truly believe that I’m doing my part to help tackle one of the biggest trends and challenges in our industry today. And I like the fact that even though we’re kind of remote, I’m engaging with so many internal and external partners. So next to PFS
Antoine Walter:
And two digital utilities, which we already addressed, what is the trends to watch in our water industry?
Anthony Dusovic:
Well, I did have digital utility on my mind, so we took that one out, but there’s one I’m going to take you in a totally different direction. It’s one that I guess I’m a you know, I’m a, I’m a natural curious person about trends and business in general, not just technologies and so on social impact investing, you know, looking at triple bottom line impacts for me is, is something that is really changed in this country. It might’ve been ahead in Europe, but, you know, moving from the old Milton Friedman concept of shareholder value as the only business driver to value for all stakeholders, that’s huge for me,
Antoine Walter:
That’s really a good one. Never heard that one. So it’s an attentive take and I love it to be honest. What is the thing you care about the most when you’re working on new projects and what is the one you care the less?
Anthony Dusovic:
I think when you take on any new project or business venture, you know, the goal of any project worth doing has to have purpose. It’s got to create value and provide some kind of benefits to stakeholders. So if you’ve got something like that, whether it’s a treatment opportunity, whether it’s a financial model, whatever the case may be, I think it’s worth doing when you talk about things like hate the least. I’m not a big fan of overly heavy and burdensome reporting. If KPIs can’t be simple, they’re not understandable. You can be sure that results ends up the same way.
Antoine Walter:
So I come to the two last ones. Do you have sources to recommend, to keep up with the water and wastewater market trends?
Anthony Dusovic:
Absolutely. If you think about things like business trends, what’s gapping in the mergers and acquisitions space what are companies doing? I think global water intelligence and Bluefield research are two great resources. If you’re thinking technology regulatory here in the U S the American water works association and the water environment Federation, the Aww weigh in where for great resources. And of course, let’s not forget LinkedIn, especially that don’t waste water podcasts.
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Antoine Walter:
That’s a wonderful recommendation. Thanks for that. By the way, you mentioned WEF, did you attend the WEFTEC Everett
Anthony Dusovic:
And it was virtual this year. So we did it all on zooms and then prerecorded messages and things like that. You’ve missed the touch, you know, somebody who likes to be around people and in front of people, and always like talking to people about new things. It was a little bit more difficult, but it’s the world we live in. I’m actually doing a variety of conferences this year. That way, I’ve got one this afternoon and I’ll be joining for a little while, but so it’s, you make the best of the situation you have.
Antoine Walter:
And that leads me to my last question. Would you have someone to recommend that we should definitely invite to this microphone?
Anthony Dusovic:
Absolutely. So if you want to talk about digital utility, I’m happy to do it, but if you want to give the mic to someone else, I we’ve got a fellow in our group named Edward Hackney, H a C K N E Y, who would be a great resource. I’d also like to bring up one more, if you want to talk more about social impact investing, there’s a great friend of mine. Her name is Ursula Bowen, B O E H M. She would be Florida social impact fund. And just to leave you with this thought, there’s about $250 billion in capital in social impact, investing funds currently, it’s a really interesting way to look at things. Well, that sounds really fascinating. So I think I’m going to follow your advice. And of course, I’d like to talk with you about digital utilities, so maybe we’ll have more than one interview, but anyways, Anthony, thanks a lot for your time.
Antoine Walter:
Thanks a lot for all the wisdom that you’ve shared. And as I said, we really, really happy to have a followup episode with you. So I hope we can put that together. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for the invitation. And I’m always looking to you know, catch up and talk to folks and it’s always a pleasure to talk to you, even though it’s been many, many years and good luck with your podcast, you’re really doing a great thing for our industry with itself, and hopefully talk soon. Thanks.