Black & Veatch has been awarded a £56 million contract by United Utilities to deliver upgrades at its Oldham and Royton wastewater treament works.

The Oldham and Royton Integrated Strategy to upgrade the Royton WwTW and Oldham WwTW,  located about 4 km apart in north east Manchester, includes meeting new final effluent discharge consents at both works and reducing storm sewage discharges to improve river water quality in the River Irk, and its tributaries.

The solution was to cease full treatment at Royton WwTW and transfer flow to Oldham WwTW for full treatment, where new secondary and tertiary treatment facilities will be provided. At both sites additional storm storage is required to reduce discharges to watercourse to meet required River Water Quality standards.

The project, which was procured as a single contract, comprises the design, procurement, construction, commissioning and operation/optimisation of a new wastewater treatment facilities at Oldham WwTW and Royton WwTW Manchester, together with transfer pipeline and pumping stations.

The scope of the works will include:

• New stormwater separation and storage facilities at Royton WwTW
• New stormwater outfall at Royton WwTW
• New header tank and pipeline to transfer flow to Oldham WwTW
• Following commissioning and trials of Oldham WwTW and the Transfer pipeline, demolition of disused treatment facilities at Royton WwTW Oldham WwTW
• Additional storage facilities to achieve a new final effluent consent.
• Connection to transfer pipeline from Royton WwTW
• Provision of flow control to primary settlement
• Refurbishment of existing Primary Settlement Tanks facilities.
• Provision of new secondary and tertiary treatment facilities to meet the new final effluent consent, this will comprise a nitrifying ASP, together with final tanks and tertiary filtration
• Upgrading of power and control and monitoring systems

The existing Oldham WwTW s consists of fine screening, grit removal, primary settlement, 2 parallel activated sludge plants, and a nitrifying Biostyr BAFF Plant. The Oldham site is also a sludge processing centre with digesters and sludge discharge to the Mersey Valley Sludge Pipeline. Sludge from Royton WwTW and other small WwTW is tankered to Oldham WwTW

The existing Royton works consists of fine screening, grit removal, primary settlement, activated sludge plant, nitrifying trickling filters (both rock and plastic media) and a tertiary nitrifying submerged aerated filter HSAF.

The new works will be able to operate fully automatically with manual intervention limited to regular and reactive maintenance. The new plant will be fully compliant with UU's Future Concept of Operations Policy which requires visualisation, performance information and remote intervention of all process units.

The scope will include new SCADA together with remote access, performance monitoring and visualisation of all process units on site at Oldham WwTW, and SCADA access from Oldham WwTW of all assets at Royton WwTW.

 Black & Veatch were one of three suppliers who bid for the work.