30 SECOND CV
Job: Chief executive, Business Stream Born: Shetland, 1974 First job: Trainee accountant, Turnbull Kemp, Perth Ambition while at school: I didn’t have a real end‑game in mind, but to be honest, I never thought I would go into business. Car: We have two – a BMW and Audi – so it depends on which one has more fuel in it Favourite mode of transport: Bike Kindle or book? I just quite like the feel of a book. A Kindle has its place, but sometimes, like on holiday by the pool, a book is the only thing that feels right Can’t live without: My family Favourite place: New York – it is just a real buzzy kind of place What makes you angry? Dishonesty, and people over‑ promising and under‑delivering Best thing about your job: Variety, without a doubt. automated meter readers (AMRS) across ten stores in the retailer’s English estate. It followed successful trials at House of Fraser stores in Edinburgh and Glasgow, where the AMRS take readings every 15 minutes to quickly identify spikes in usage that could be down to underlying problems such as leaks.
Comparable agreements with other clients south of the Border are “in the pipeline”. Looking further ahead, Dow will draw on her background prior to joining Scottish Water in 2002 to tackle these new opportunities.
Raised in Shetland, she left at the age of 17 to become a trainee accountant in Perth with Turnbull Kemp. She achieved chartered accountancy at the age of 21, then went on to join Henderson Loggie in Dundee as an audit manager.
Dow joined what was then Scottish & Southern Energy in 1998, just as that business was being forged from the merger of Southern Electric and Scottish Hydro Electric. She would go on to hold a range of roles in SSE’S telecoms, transmission and distribution businesses, all during the early days of competition in the UK electricity market.
“I was used to competition, and used to that threat of losing customers,” Dow says. “That was unique coming into Scottish Water, which until then had always been a monopoly provider.”
About half of her working hours these days are spent helping to shape the new non-domestic market in England, where Dow has continuing concerns on key issues such as the separation of retail and wholesale operations, the level of profit margins allowed by regulators and the structure of the existing market.
On the latter, she points out that while Scotland has one wholesale provider, England has 18. Different levels of charges and service standards across these 18 regions will make it difficult for a retail supplier to properly serve business customers with outlets spanning the whole of England.
“All we can do is continue to raise our concerns,” Dow says. “For me, it is not that we have to have a carbon copy of the Scottish market, but what is essential is that we have an effective market.”