Percentage of Non-Revenue Water KPI

Percentage of Non-Revenue Water (NRW) is a critical KPI that measures the efficiency of water utilities in managing their resources.

High NRW levels can lead to significant financial losses, impacting operational efficiency and overall financial health.

By tracking this metric, organizations can identify leakage points, optimize resource allocation, and enhance customer satisfaction.

Reducing NRW not only improves cash flow but also aligns with sustainability goals, making it a key figure in strategic planning.

Effective management of NRW can directly influence ROI metrics and long-term business outcomes.

How Percentage of Non-Revenue Water Connects to Your Strategy

Percentage of Non-Revenue Water belongs to a single KPI group in KPI Depot, the ISO 24510 KPI group, where it ranks eleventh. That focus is telling in itself: rather than appearing thinly across many contexts, this metric lives inside one water services framework and is read entirely through the lens of service quality and sustainability that the framework defines.

It carries the internal perspective of the balanced scorecard, and it behaves as an efficiency and loss measure rather than an outcome the utility is ultimately judged on. The headline members of this KPI group point at quality, access, and reliability: Water Quality Compliance Rate ranks first, Drinking Water Accessibility second, then Water Treatment Plant Uptime and Wastewater Treatment Compliance Rate. Against that company, non-revenue water is the metric that describes how much of the water a utility produces never reaches a paying customer, whether through physical leakage, theft, or metering error. It works one level down from the quality and access story, describing the efficiency of the network that delivers on it.

The real tension sits with cost and with pressure management. Bringing non-revenue water down is not free: it takes capital for mains renewal, metering, and district monitoring, plus sustained maintenance effort, all of which pull against the cost discipline a utility also has to keep. The lever interacts with another member of this same KPI group as well. Aggressive pressure management is one of the most effective ways to cut leakage, but pushing pressure down to save water runs straight into Water Pressure Compliance Rate, which holds the utility to a minimum service pressure for its customers. So the metric cannot be optimized in isolation. It has to be read against the spending it demands and against the pressure commitment it can undermine if pursued too hard.

Measuring Percentage of Non-Revenue Water in Practice

The inputs for this metric live in two places that rarely agree cleanly. System input volume comes from production meters at treatment works and network entry points. Billed consumption comes from the customer billing system, read from customer meters on a cycle. Honest measurement is the reconciliation of those two over the same period and the same boundary, and most disputes about the number trace back to input meters and customer meters that are read on different schedules or drift at different rates.

The definitional forks decide what the figure even means. First is the denominator itself: non-revenue water can be carried as a share of system input volume, as a volume lost per connection per day, or as a volume lost per length of main, and these describe different realities that should never be blended. Second is the split between apparent and real losses: apparent losses are metering error and theft, water that was delivered but not paid for, while real losses are physical leakage from the network, and the two call for completely different remedies, so a single blended figure hides which problem a utility actually has. Third is the treatment of authorized consumption that is not billed, such as firefighting, mains flushing, and utility use, which is water that left the system legitimately without revenue and has to be classified consistently rather than swept in with losses.

Segmentation is where the metric becomes actionable. Broken out by district metered area, by pressure zone, by pipe material and age, and by season, non-revenue water almost always concentrates in a few parts of the network rather than spreading evenly, and a utility-wide figure conceals exactly where the loss sits. On instrumentation, watch for unmetered or under-registering production meters that distort the input side, customer meters that slow with age and undercount real consumption, and billing lag that books consumption in the wrong period. Any of these can move the figure without a single change in actual losses, so the meters and the boundary have to be trusted before the percentage is.

Common Pitfalls

Many utilities underestimate the impact of NRW on their financial health and operational efficiency.

• Ignoring regular maintenance schedules can exacerbate leakage issues. Without proactive measures, small leaks can escalate into major losses, affecting service delivery and costs.
• Failing to invest in modern technology limits the ability to detect and address NRW. Outdated systems often lack the capability for real-time monitoring, leading to delayed responses to leaks and inefficiencies.
• Neglecting staff training on NRW management practices can create knowledge gaps. Employees may not be equipped to identify issues or implement best practices, resulting in persistent inefficiencies.
• Overlooking customer feedback on service quality can mask underlying NRW problems. Without insights from users, utilities may miss critical indicators of service failures linked to water loss.

Improvement Levers

Reducing NRW requires a multifaceted approach focused on technology, training, and process optimization.

• Implement advanced metering infrastructure to enhance monitoring capabilities. Smart meters provide real-time data, enabling quicker identification of leaks and inefficiencies.
• Conduct regular audits of water distribution systems to pinpoint vulnerabilities. Systematic assessments help prioritize repairs and upgrades, reducing long-term losses.
• Invest in employee training programs to build expertise in NRW management. Knowledgeable staff can better identify issues and implement effective solutions, driving performance improvements.
• Enhance customer engagement initiatives to gather feedback on service quality. Actively seeking input can reveal areas for improvement and foster trust in the utility’s commitment to service excellence.

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Percentage of Non-Revenue Water Benchmarks

We have 6 relevant benchmarks in our benchmarks database.

Browse the Top Benchmarked KPIs in ISO 24510

Reading the Benchmarks for Percentage of Non-Revenue Water

Six tracked benchmarks stand behind external comparisons for this metric, and they come from three bodies that measure different populations in different ways. The Water Services Regulatory Board reports on water utilities in Kenya. The World Bank appears across several figures covering South Africa and developing countries more broadly, framed in one case as an average and in another as a threshold. AVK reports on water utilities in Europe and, separately, on a global population. These are not one finding restated; they are distinct populations pulled from distinct eras, one of them drawn from the 2013 to 2014 period.

Geography drives this metric more than almost any other factor, which is what makes casual comparison dangerous. Non-revenue water depends heavily on the age of the infrastructure, the pressure in the network, the density of connections, and the level of metering and enforcement, all of which vary enormously from one region to the next. A figure from a utility in one part of the world says very little about what is achievable or normal somewhere else, so a Kenyan figure, a South African figure, and a European one are not points on a single scale.

The framing differs too. An average across a population and a threshold that marks a target or an acceptable ceiling answer different questions, and a customer who reads a threshold as a typical result, or the reverse, will draw the wrong conclusion. Deeper still, non-revenue water is not even defined the same way across sources. It can be expressed as a share of the water put into supply, or as a volume lost per connection per day, or as a volume lost per kilometer of main. Those denominators describe genuinely different things, so figures built on them are not comparable even when they carry the same name. Reading the Water Services Regulatory Board, the World Bank, and AVK side by side without accounting for population, framing, and denominator invites a false comparison, which is precisely why source-attributed data with its method attached is worth paying for.

OKRs That Use Percentage of Non-Revenue Water

This KPI is named directly as a key result inside the ISO 24510 KPI group's own OKR material, so its application is explicit rather than inferred. It appears under the objective to Enhance customer satisfaction through responsive service and efficient complaint resolution, where reducing non-revenue water sits beside faster complaint resolution and a higher Customer Satisfaction Index. The logic in the group's own reasoning is that cutting water losses limits wastage and improves resource management, which indirectly eases the costs customers ultimately bear.

Under that objective, set Percentage of Non-Revenue Water as a directional key result: reduce the share of produced water that is lost before it reaches a paying customer. Keep the supporting results honest by pairing it with the constraints it pulls against, holding Water Pressure Compliance Rate at its required level so leakage is not cut simply by starving the network of pressure, and tracking the maintenance and capital effort the reduction actually takes rather than assuming it comes for free.

Hold the key result directional rather than tied to a fixed figure. The intent is a network that loses less water because leaks were found and meters were fixed, tracked alongside the pressure and cost commitments that keep the gain real.

See OKR Examples for ISO 24510

KPI Categories

This KPI is associated with the following categories and industries in our KPI database: