NI Water Make A Boob.

During the lead up to the Christmas Period, Northern Ireland experienced some of the coldest conditions on record, with temperatures plummeting to -18 degrees in Castlederg and the worst snow fall for 25 years. Christmas morning for me was a chilly -16 degrees. Fast forward 24 hours and Boxing day was a positively tropical 6 degrees. However, as the temperatures rose, burst pipes from the freeze began to drain reservoirs of their stores, commencing the nightmare for NI Water.

Tonight, Peter Robinson condemned NI's response to the fiasco, labelling it as "shambolic" and "ineffective". More than 6,000 homes tonight remain without running water and NI water is having to rotate its supply to some 60,000 customers. This for NI Water (NIW) is a PR disaster. What could they have done differently? Two words:

SOCIAL MEDIA

As far as I can tell, NIW is yet to take advantage of Social Media channels. What adds further insult to this fact is some clever cookie has jumped the gun and started a pseudonym on Twitter unofficially as NI Water. Under the name of 'Not Really NI Water', the do-gooder is not only helpfully tweeting updates from NI Water themselves but highlighting the fact that NIW are nowhere to be seen.

 All NIW engineers carry mobile phones. All engineers therefore have the ability to send a simple update via sms, detailing progress made or update those areas with or without water in real time, turning this experience into something slightly less sour. Instead, some have been without water for 12days with no idea of when it will be restored. Others have had intervals between water supplies, resulting in timid use of taps for fear of causing an airlock in the system. Burst pipes were inevitable, we all knew this. However by keeping the public in the dark NIW has somewhat signed their own fate.

The damage has been done in this case and it looks like the only way out of the fiasco is to embark on a complete overhaul on how NIW is funded and operated. This is a prime example of how simple it could have been to keep the public on-side. The money required to change NIW's reputation back round in comparison to the pennies required to update a twitter account is, well, sad to say the least.