Pay for the water.Not the plant.

01 · The problem

Infrastructure is a balance-sheet problem.

Securing water on site used to mean buying a plant. That meant capital up front, a specialist design, approvals, and then years of operation, maintenance and compliance testing by people whose real job is running an estate, a hotel or a mine.

The weak point is rarely the equipment. It is what happens after commissioning. The Department of Water and Sanitation’s 2025 Green Drop report placed about 47% of municipal wastewater systems in a critical state, and the gaps it records are largely operational: skills, maintenance and monitoring.^[1] Private plants without a clear operator face the same risk at a smaller scale.

02 · What changes

Water infrastructure, financed your way.

Under Water as a Service, LIVWater designs, builds, finances, operates and maintains the system. You receive treated, measured water to an agreed standard, and you pay for it as a service.

You buy the outcome: water, measured and delivered. We carry the plant.

Three things change for the owner. Capital is freed for the core business. Operating risk moves to the party best placed to manage it, with performance guarantees for supply, quality and reliability written into a service level agreement. And the cost of water becomes a known number in next year’s budget rather than a surprise repair.

03 · Three ways to pay

One system. Three ownership models.

Every model includes the same turnkey system and service: design, installation and commissioning, a full operations and maintenance plan, LIVSmart monitoring and guaranteed performance. What changes is the capital you commit and when the asset becomes yours.

“No upfront capital” applies to Owner-Operator and Rent to Own. Outright Purchase is a capital purchase, with the same design, service and monitoring behind it. See the models in detail.

04 · What the service covers

Design, build, finance, operate and maintain.

• 01

  Design and approvals

  Sizing to your demand and sources, with borehole licensing, water use authorisation and council approvals handled for you.

• 02

  Build and commission

  A turnkey installation of LIVSupply, LIVWaste or both, tested before handover.

• 03

  Operate and maintain

  Scheduled servicing, consumables and repairs, with response times set in the service level agreement.

• 04

  Measure every drop

  LIVSmart metering and monitoring show supply, quality and use, and raise an alarm when something changes.

05 · How the fee is built

A known number in next year’s budget.

A service fee is not a mystery charge. It is built from the same costs an owner would carry anyway, priced over the life of the system and wrapped in a guarantee.

• The asset. Design, equipment, installation and commissioning, recovered over the contract term rather than paid on day one (Owner-Operator and Rent to Own).
• Operation. Scheduled site visits, process control, consumables and the energy the plant needs.
• Maintenance and renewal. Servicing, repairs and the planned replacement of parts that wear, such as membranes and pumps.
• Compliance. Water quality testing, records and the reporting that authorisations require.
• Monitoring. LIVSmart metering and alarms, so performance against the agreement is visible to both sides.

For a body corporate or a board, the difference is governance as much as cash flow. Trustees approve a service with defined outcomes instead of a capital project with open-ended running costs. When something goes wrong, the agreement says who fixes it, how fast and at whose cost.

06 · Where it fits

Built for the sites that cannot stop.

WaaS suits any site where interrupted water is expensive and running a plant is not the core business. That includes residential estates and body corporates, lodges and hotels, mining and contractor camps, farms and agri-processing plants, and schools and clinics. In each case the logic is the same: a fixed fee for a guaranteed service is easier to govern than a plant that depends on whoever is on site.

07 · What to ask

Six questions for any WaaS provider.

1. What exactly is guaranteed: volume, quality, uptime, or all three?
2. Which standard is the water tested against, how often, and who sees the results?
3. Who holds the water use authorisations and approvals?
4. What happens to the fee if the guarantee is missed?
5. Can capacity grow with the next phase without replacing the system?
6. Under which model, and on what terms, does ownership transfer?

Good answers to these questions are what separate Water as a Service from equipment rental with a new name.