WET News

2 WET NEWS JUNE 2016 COMMENT "It's such a simple, quick and e cient way of collaborating on a project" JUNE 400 The number of beaches at least that the Environment Agency is carrying out sampling between now and September as part of its annual water quality testing. Thames Water has announced that Truphone chief executive Steve Robertson will replace Martin Baggs as chief executive in early September 2016. Robertson has spent his whole career in the telecoms sector. Anglian Water has o cially opened a new £28M facility at its Grafham water treatment works, in a ceremony attended by the Duke of Edinburgh. The facil- ity will store an additional 40million litres of treated water to secure supplies for more than a million homes and businesses in the growing Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes area for decades to come. £28M 40Ml £700M The funding that Tideway has secured from the European Investment Bank for its London 'super sewer'. The loan, which is for 35 years, is the largest ever for water investment worldwide. $1.3bn How much the commercial drones market is expected to be worth globally by 2020. "This is a world first and there are some fantastic names joining our family to create a really powerful vehicle to take Thames Water forward. " Thames Water chief executive Martin Baggs on the Technology & Transformation Alliance (TTA) signing. TTA comprises Accenture, Bilfi nger, Deloitte and IBM. "This project is all about securing the fantastic legacy the Victorians left us in the Elan Valley Aqueduct..." Severn Trent's Liv Garfi eld, awarding a key contract to Barhale on the £300M Birmingham Resilience Project. £14M Dee Valley Water, which supplies customers in Wrexham and Chester, has begun a £14M scheme to tackle the problem of discoloured water experienced by some of its customers in Wrexham. Move over BIM – the drones are in town I didn't think anything could beat my enthusiasm for building information modelling but it has. Yes, I have discovered the magic of the latest boys toy – the UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) or drone, as it is more commonly known. I had the good fortune to visit AMP recently. Not anything to do with the industry's notorious asset management plan but Aerial Motion Pictures, which specialises in supplying drones and drone Š ight training. Having seen what drones can do and the real-time imaging they provide I can certainly see why their use in the water sector is on the increase. Morrison Utility Services used drone technology during the investigation and design of a new 22km pipeline in Swaledale. Scottish Water has just released video footage taken by a drone of its £100M Shieldhall Strategic Tunnel project in Glasgow. The " lm shows the 200m-long entrance to the 3.1 mile wastewater tunnel as well as parts of the 180m-long, 1,000-tonne TBM – now being assembled at Craigton before it starts tunnelling later in the summer. This bird's eye view is fascinating but the added bene" t of using drone technology is that it provides safe and cost-e— ective imaging. Costain takes a 'soft- landing' approach Costain should be congratulated for taking an instrumental role in designing a new system to communicate digital data on new assets that can later be used to manage the structures. The new approach, known as 'the so™ -landing process', is part of the latest regulations for Building Information Modelling (BIM) and aims to involve the end-user of the building in the design process before the " rst brick is laid to make the process smoother and to capture speci" c needs. Costain has developed OnSoLa, a common electronic area that is similar to a chat-room and to which everyone involved in the project has access. OnSoLa enables partici- pants to upload images – any- thing from a simple diagram to 360-degree camera shots – to the chat-room and 'stick' comments to them, to give a clearer idea to other partici- pants of what they are talking about. The electronic 'rooms' revolve around a posed question and the room will only close when a collective decision is reached. What a brilliant idea. It's such a simple, quick and ež cient way of collaborating on a project. concrete steel clean water civils waste water FULL REFURBISHMENT SERVICES FOR RESERVOIR & WATER TOWERS, CLEAN & SEWAGE TREATMENT WORKS, STEEL/CONCRETE TANKS & VESSELS, SPILLWAYS & AQUEDUCTS, BRIDGES, PIPEWORK, PIPE BRIDGES & OTHER ASSETS. FULL CIVIL ENGINEERING CAPABILITY INC NEW BUILD PROJECTS. PLEASE CONTACT US FOR OUR FULL SCOPE OF SERVICES. Miller Homes ned for silt and sediment pollution in watercourse Unauthorised discharge of water from a construction site lands housing building š rm with hefty š ne. H ome building company Miller Homes has been " ned £100,000 over a pollution incident that in- volved water containing silt and sediment being discharged into a watercourse. Miller Homes, of Edinburgh, appeared before Leeds Crown Court on May 18 following the pollution incident, which related to a housing develop- ment at Lindley Park, Hudders- " eld, in November 2013. The company admitted one environmental o— ence for an unauthorised discharge of water, containing silt and sedi- ment, from the construction site into a nearby watercourse that runs into Grimescar Dyke. Flannery Civil Engineering, of Castleford, was " ned £9,000 by Kirklees Magistrates' Court in March a™ er admitting a sim- ilar charge for its involvement in the same incident. Prosecuting for the Environ- ment Agency (EA), Chris Bunt- ing told the court that the pol- luted water should have been managed on the construction site, and that neither company had permission to discharge silt water from the site. Miller Homes contracted Flannery to construct four stor- age lagoons in order to reduce the risk of Š ooding down- stream. Straw bales were used on the outŠ ow of the lower lagoon to prevent silt from leaving the site. But following heavy rainfall in November 2013, the lower lagoon " lled with water, and Flannery removed the straw bales to allow it to drain. With the bales removed, silt water ran directly into the water- course, a— ecting water quality. A member of the public reported the pollution incident to the EA, which sent an ož cer to investigate. He found that the watercourse was running a dark brown colour, and traced the source back to the develop- ment site. The ož cer also saw that the straw bales were situated at the side of the lagoon, no longer " l- tering the discharge. Water entering the top lagoon was clear, but the water leaving the bottom lagoon was cloudy. An EA spokesperson said a™ er the case: "Environmental permitting laws exist to protect the environment and local communities from harm. This case shows how important it is that construction and other industrial companies adhere to the regulations to ensure that their activities do not pose a risk of pollution. Miller Homes should have had more e— ective water man- agement systems on the con- struction site to prevent the silty run-o— from a— ecting local watercourses." In mitigation, Miller Homes said it immediately improved the lagoon system following the incident. It added that it is one of a small number of house building companies that had achieved an accreditation for environmental standards, and that its board of directors had been "apoplectic" that the problem had not been reported to the EA or even themselves at the time. The company was also ordered to pay £2,901.03 in costs. Straw bales had been used on the outflow of the lower lagoon

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