MOSL insists water market will open on time despite delay

Market Operator Services Limited (MOSL) has insisted a three-week delay to the development of its systems will not affect the overall timescale for market opening.

The company, which is in charge of the programme to open up the non-domestic water market to retail competition in April 2017, is currently into the first phase of building its systems.

Speaking at a media briefing in London, MOSL chief executive Ben Jeffs said: “we’re slightly behind, we’re due to drop the code next week so about three weeks delayed.”

However, he said, MOSL’s strategy has always been that this is a fixed timescale project with a fixed budget that is “fully defined” under the market architecture plan.

“Like all IT development programmes, there is a level of complexity that we need to go through,” he added.

“What we’re trying to do is balance that need to run as fast as we can to deliver in that fixed timescale, that fixed budget, that fixed scope, with the pragmatism that’s required financially, to try and preserve the overall timeline.

“I’m pleased to say that we have been able to do that and the three-week delay that we’ve just had is actually not going to have a major impact on the overall timeline of the programme, so we’re still on track.”

The market is due to open in April 2017, allowing 1.2 million businesses and other non-household customers of providers based mainly or wholly in England to choose their supplier of water and wastewater services.

Last June MOSL took over from Open Water Markets Limited to finalise and base-line the market documents; to procure, build and test the market IT systems; and to establish market readiness and company engagement, following an overhaul of the market opening programme by Ofwat.

MOSL made the decision to put the programme to ‘red’ this February, after it experienced “a number of issues” during the first phase of the central market operating system (CMOS) build.

The company said: “The programme has no time contingency, the programme status will therefore be escalated at times to ‘red’ to secure the appropriate management focus and response.”

Phase one development was due to conclude on 4 April, when the fully system-integration-tested version would be delivered in order to begin user acceptance testing.

However, MOSL said it had not seen the expected increase in tests being passed, and the status of the programme was further escalated within CGI – the company responsible for building the system.

CGI offered MOSL two options – an interim code-drop on 4 April, which would allow a large number of transactions to be available and executed, but with a health warning that it’s been tested against valid data but not invalid data; or being able to exit SIT three weeks later on 25 April.

In a letter, Jeffs wrote: “We are disappointed not to have been able to make a fully SIT-tested CMOS system available to market participants on 4 April as planned.

“I have written to CGI to express our concerns regarding this critical milestone being missed and the need for greater confidence in the revised date being met.”