In Focus: asset management
A
lot of emphasis is placed on the im-
portance of tackling leakage in the
clean water network, but the UK's
ageing sewerage network also poses sig-
nificant risk to utilities and requires major
investment. Blockages are the most com-
mon type of failure, but sewer collapses
can have more severe consequences and
are a problem for smaller clay sewers as
well as Victorian brickwork.
The term fatberg has now moved into
mainstream use, with sewer blockages
caused by mammoth build-ups of fats,
oils and grease and sanitary waste and
wipes making newspaper headlines. At a
local level, the misery and cost caused by
blockages includes the flooding of homes
and gardens with sewage, and pollution
spills into rivers and waterways.
In AMP7 – the water industry's regula-
tory asset management period 2020-25
– Ofwat's expectations for sewerage focus
on five outcome delivery incentives (ODIs)
- external sewer flooding, internal sewer
flooding, pollution incidents, block-
ages and sewer collapses. Companies in
England and Wales face major penalties
for flooding and pollution events on top of
the cost of restoring the asset and redress-
ing any damage.
Typical ODI penalty costs combined
with the cost of dealing with an internal
flooding event, where the interior of a
customer's home is directly affected, run
into hundreds of thousands of pounds,
and water companies are targeted with
a tight score for the maximum number
of breaches each year. The good news is
that mitigating sewer flood and pollution
events plays directly to the regulator's
Caption
Sewer blockages can cause flooding.
Unlocking the potential of
sewerage analytics
Regulatory pressure to
prevent sewer flooding
and pollution events
means technology will
play a bigger role in
AMP7 than ever before.
Servelec Technologies'
technical director,
Marcus Fowler, reveals
some of the advanced
planning and analytics
tools being applied.
24 | MARCH 2020 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk
