WET News

2 WET NEWS MAY 015 COMMENT "...the supply chain needs to educate on BIM. Clients need to listen too." MAY 120 The number of engineers currently making up Southern Water's new in-house engineering team. The company said the team is working on 90 AMP6 projects that are now live. "It's great to be joining Murphy at this time. My immediate focus will be to further develop our client relationships, working on new and innovative solutions to their needs" Bill Thicknes, J Murphy's new operations director for London & South. Around 82% of utilities are not collaborating on reducing the administrative burden of supplier informa- tion. Only 34% work with others in the same industry. 82% 34% "Recycling sewage water into drinking water may become new normal amid California drought." @SavetheWater £100M How much South West Water (SWW) parent Pennon paid for Sembcorp Bournemouth Water. The acquisition is part of a strategy to reorganise SWW's operations ahead of market liberalisation in two years time. £560M How much the Scottish Water framework is worth for water and wastewater services "Good governance on all projects is key to delivering successful jobs and securing repeat client work, and I am committed to working with the team to deliver this ethos..." Je Alchin, Imtech WW&E's new senior operations manager. "Davyhulme has been selected as an exemplar project by the team and signi™ cant eš orts will be made to drive new innovations." Des Chalk, Mott MacDonald project manager, on the Davyhulme WwTW upgrade. £12M Scottish Water is spending £12.4M on improving its wastewater network in Glasgow's Elmvale Row area. The project is being carried out by Black & Veatch and Amey joint venture aBV. A ccording to the latest KPMG report, poor performance by contractors is the reason for project failures even though there have been improvements in project (see front page). According to KPMG, the only construction world will only see poor performing contracts change through contractors and project owners adopting digital digital engineering methods such as building information technology (BIM). BIM is an enabler of collaboration, but if BIM4Water chair Jon De Souza is correct then the water sector may have a problem. According to De Souza, only a handful of water companies are actively looking using BIM on projects, while others are waiting to see these results and then hope to catch up. Yet again, it shows a slowness by the water compa- nies to embrace a process that could lead to greater planning e† ciency, and cost savings through lean manufacturing. In the past couple of years great strides have been made in establishing a more collabora- tive environment between the water companies, and their contractors and the supply. I'm sure that there are some contractors who are poor performers in the construction industry. However, what percentage of this poor performance down to the client not accepting technology or process innovation? De Souza says the supply chain needs to educate clients on the joys of BIM. I would add that clients need to listen too. Alliancing proves a winner yet again Congratulations to ESD on becoming the preferred bidder on Scottish Water's £560M framework for water and wastewater services. ESD is a new collaboration between Black & Veatch, Galliford Try and MWH Global. Under the alliance agreement Black & Veatch, Galliford Try and MWH Global will operate as equal joint venture partners working in collaboration with Scottish Water. The programme that they will be working on forms part of a wider investment by Scottish Water to improve treatment works serving its ˜ ve million customers. It's clear to see that no matter where the regulatory cycle is – north or south of the border – consortia are the chosen bodies for delivering the water companies' capital investment programmes. A lot of AMP6 work is up still up for grabs, especially for those further down the suppy chain. Seeking out potential partners for an alliance may be more bene˜ cial than you think. Designing in-house Southern's way Southern Water's new in-house engineering team is working on at least 90 live AMP6 projects. There's 120 engineers in the team so far. If my maths are correct that's 1.33 people per project. The government's progress on both metering and SuDS is disappointing Ÿ Insitute calls on the next government to raise the bar on environment issues, as report states SuDS progress has been 'poor'. T he Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) has criticised the coalition government for coming up short in a number of water policy areas over the past ˜ ve years, saying progress on sustainable urban drainage systems (SuDS) has been particularly disappointing. A new report by the institute was critical of progress on sustainable drainage. "Progress on delivering sustainable drainage systems has been poor. Guidance, maintenance, adoption and how they are dealt with in the planning system need resolving," it said. It also said that the Water White Paper "lacked ambition" on metering, and that while water metering had increased across the country since 2010, this was driven by individual water company action rather than through a collaborative approach supported by the government. The report also measures the performance of the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government against CIWEM's 2010 manifesto, Fitting the Bill, which laid out priorities for the government on water and environmental policy. It praised the progress made in water company regulation, in particular the imposition of a duty of resilience on water regulator Ofwat in the Water Act 2014. The institute's report also gave a mixed verdict on the Flood and Water Management Act and the energy e† ciency measures contained in the Green Deal. Overall, the insititute said that the coalition had placed the environment a ˜ rm second to economic growth, and called on the next government to ensure that its policies place a healthy environment at the heart of a sustainable economy rather than viewing it as a brake on economic growth. Dr Simon Festing, chief executive of the institute, said: "This government may technically have been the greenest ever, but as many commentators have observed, the bar has been set exceptionally low." Dr Festing continued: "As our analysis against measures we had hoped to see signi˜ cant progress on over the last ˜ ve years shows, there is an open goal waiting for the next government to genuinely achieve that accolade. "Another ˜ ve years has passed with insu† cient action on the environment, which sustains our society and economy. In school report parlance, this student must try harder." www.teekaycouplings.com tel: +44 (0)1494 679500

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