West of Scotland Water is the largest of Scotland's three water authorities. It ranks sixth in the UK with 93,000 business customers and 919,000 households.

It also has a wide range of operations within its business: it is the third largest sheep farmer in Scotland and the most active shipper on the Clyde.

The programmes inherited from its predecessor organisations had to be reviewed to meet the needs of the water industry today. Organisational structures had changed and the right structure had to be found for training.

Personal development planning is now jointly driven by line manager and employee so training can be more spontaneous and job-related. Management development has been benchmarked against that of other organisations to gain from their best practice.

And, although it is unusual for a utility company to implement Investors in People across its whole organisation, it achieved IIP accreditation in its first year of operation and become the first major UK water and sewerage undertaking to be accredited.

The company has worked with the national water training organisation to develop national standards in the sector and produced a guide for managers. The Board for Education and Training in the Water Industry set a target of this year for water companies, authorities, suppliers and contractors to achieve the IIP standard.

The process of achieving IIP led to substantial savings from the ''continuous-improvement culture'' it fostered, such as 800,000 in dry-docking costs for its sludgeboat, six-figure sums because of improved effluent-sampling at sewage treatment works, and #12,000 for every aqueduct-scaffolding operation.

West of Scotland Water responded by doubling its training and development budget, with training programmes directly linked to support the business plans of the operating sections, and the returns from the extra spending on training have not just been the sharper skills of its own staff.

It has also earned income from selling its training expertise abroad and it has shared its practices with engineers from Egypt and Vietnam, helping foreign water authorities and contractors.