Strengthening water resilience for a global healthcare manufacturer

For global life sciences manufacturers, a stable and uninterrupted water supply is essential to ensure patient safety, regulatory compliance, and reliable delivery of life saving products.

At the same time, production sites around the world are increasingly exposed to water related risks, from extreme weather and local water scarcity to aging infrastructure and reliance on single water sources. For our client, understanding these risks and preparing for potential disruptions before it happens became a strategic priority.

To address this challenge, Ramboll partnered with the client to systematically assess water related risks across its key production sites and to develop a client-centric approach for water assessments to support its ESG strategy.

Water risk and resilience assessment

The first phase of the project focused on understanding how vulnerable water supply disruptions could affect operations across 21 production facilities in the Americas, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. Rather than looking at water efficiency or traditional audits, the emphasis was on operational resilience and on identifying where and how water related incidents could interrupt critical production.

To support this work, the project team applied the J-100 American Water Works Association’s (AWWA) methodology. Originally developed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to assess public water systems, the methodology was adapted for an industrial context, allowing each production site to be evaluated through a structured and comparable resilience lens. The initial assessment was limited to pilot projects on two selected sites to validate the methodology before expanding assessments to the 19 remaining sites.

The assessments were based on an “all hazards” analysis covering multiple categories of risk, including:

• Natural hazards: Includes all storms, floods, wildfires and other natural events that have or could reasonably occur in the location of the facility.
• Dependency threats: Includes all interruptions of utilities, suppliers, employees, customers and transportation.
• Proximity threats: A threat associated with being near another facility that could impact operation.
• Malevolent threats: Includes various modes of attack and various magnitudes of attack by both inside and outside bad actors.

Each risk was evaluated based on likelihood, potential impact, and the consequences of short to multi day service interruptions. The assessments were carried out by local Ramboll teams with regional expertise, reducing the need for extensive travel while strengthening local insight. At the same time, this approach helped build a globally distributed team with shared experience in water risk and resilience assessments.

Identification of mitigation measures

With key vulnerabilities identified, the project moved into a second phase focused on translating findings into practical, site-specific mitigation measures. The objective was to make risks actionable and support stronger water resilience across priority facilities.

Measures included:

• Infrastructure resilience, such as addressing single point failures (e.g. single pump feed with no redundancy).
• Security measures, including fencing, access control, and badge based restrictions for sensitive areas.
• Water supply robustness assessing dependence on groundwater, surface water, or municipal supply and associated risks.
• Operational vulnerabilities such as access roads, bridges, and logistics routes affecting distribution even when facilities remain operational.

As a result, these mitigation measures created a clear pathway from risk identification to concrete resilience improvements that the client was able to act on immediately and has since implemented successfully at several sites.