We’re now one month into AMP8—a regulatory period that brings the largest ever investment in the UK water industry, with over £104 billion allocated to overhaul infrastructure, improve resilience and deliver long-overdue environmental progress. But despite the scale of the ambition, many project leaders are already encountering the same problem: they don’t have the people to deliver it.

This isn’t a surprise. The skills crisis facing the water sector has been building for years. But now it’s real, it’s immediate, and it threatens the viability of AMP8 from the start.

A Shortfall We Can’t Ignore

From workforce retirements to talent attrition and a shortage of mid-level engineers, the gap between available skills and delivery demand has never been more stark. Our conversations with frameworks, delivery partners, and engineers across the UK confirm what many already suspect: the sector has entered AMP8 under-resourced.

Early findings from our upcoming 2025 Labour Report suggest this gap is not only real but growing. The pool of engineers ready to mobilise and deliver – the doers, not just the planners – is getting smaller, just as the pressure to deliver ramps up.

The Myth of the Permanent Solution

For too long, the industry has defaulted to a permanent hiring model that simply doesn’t fit the rhythm or scale of AMP cycles. Project peaks require rapid mobilisation and delivery flexibility. What we need now is not more time spent rewriting retention strategies, but a clear embrace of contingent hiring as a strategic function.

Many engineers no longer want ‘jobs for life’—they want projects with impact, flexibility, learning—and competitive pay. That’s not a liability; it’s an opportunity. As we outline in our Labour Reports, contingent engineers often stay longer, deliver faster, and cost less over the lifecycle of a project. But only if employers shift their mindset.

Breaking Systemic Bottlenecks

Beyond attitudes, systemic issues like IR35 are still undermining access to external talent. Too many engineering delivery roles are being wrongly assessed as inside IR35, inflating costs by up to 25% and creating avoidable hiring delays. If these determinations aren’t urgently reviewed and standardised, the result will be more project slippage and more lost value from this investment cycle.

A Sector Under Scrutiny

The perception of the water industry is under real strain. Stories of sewage overflows, ageing infrastructure and most recently, executives being fined and bonuses withheld for underperformance have dominated headlines. While these headlines focus on governance, they shape how the public—and prospective engineers—see the sector.

This has a knock-on effect on recruitment. It’s harder to inspire early-career professionals to join an industry that feels embattled. And for contractors who have the option to work in cleaner, more celebrated sectors like renewables or transport, the choice is becoming obvious.

If the industry wants to bring in the best talent, it has to not only fix its pipelines but also fix its messaging.

Collaboration is the Competitive Edge

One of AMP8’s greatest challenges—and opportunities—is industry coordination. For too long, frameworks, suppliers and delivery partners have worked in silos. Resource visibility is low. Talent strategies are misaligned. Communication between project owners and delivery partners is patchy at best.

Compare this to sectors like energy or transport, where industry-wide collaboration is more mature, and talent flows more predictably. As we heard at recent Future Water events, there is growing appetite to change this in water. But it needs to go beyond talk.

What Now?

The first month of AMP8 has already shown us what’s at stake. If the sector continues to compete for the same limited pool of engineers, in the same way we always have, we will fall short. The solution is clear:

• Embrace contingent hiring as core to delivery
• Standardise and reform IR35 assessments
• Share pipeline information across frameworks and delivery tiers
• Invest in perception and outreach, especially to early-career and crossover talent

At Water by Murray, we’ve been helping organisations adapt to this new reality—not just by supplying engineers, but by reshaping hiring strategies to reflect the real market.

AMP8 will define the sector for the next decade. But only if we build the workforce to match its ambition.

Speak to our team if you are looking for your next engineering position, or if your workforce requires additional resources for AMP8

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