ESI Consulting, one of the UK’s leading environmental consultancies, specialising in water, land and sustainable development, has been awarded a place on Severn Trent Water Limited’s AMP6 Water Resource Planning Framework.

Running for a minimum of three years, with an option to extend for a further two, ESI will lead an Alliance of expert teams to manage water resource management, hydrology and hydrogeology projects.

The Alliance includes APEM (aquatic ecology) and Hydrologic Services Limited (water resource modelling) as the main partners, plus a number of other specialist suppliers.

Serving more than 8 million people in the heart of the UK, Severn Trent Water has statutory duties to prepare and maintain a Water Resources Management Plan (WRMP) and a Drought Plan.

Since 2003, Government has required all water companies to produce a WRMP that explains how they will provide customers with a sustainable and reliable supply of water, and a Drought Plan that explains the measures that will be taken to maintain supplies to customers under drought scenarios.

ESI will manage the Alliance to assist Severn Trent to deliver on its WRMP commitments through the following AMP6 Framework:

Hydrogeology

• Borehole design and optimisation
• Groundwater modelling
• Test pumping, water features monitoring, environmental monitoring and impact assessments.
• WFD groundwater impact assessments
• Abstraction licence support
• Groundwater quality catchment modelling and risk assessments

Hydrology

• Flow gauging
• Aquator modelling and coding
• Rainfall / runoff modelling
• Abstraction licence support

Environment and Hydro-ecology

• Low flow alleviation studies and impact assessments
• WFD surface water / Heavily Modified Water Body impact assessments
• Ecological sampling, surveying and impact assessments to support drought permit sites

Water Resource Management Plans

Taking the statutory WRMP through a Strategic Environmental Appraisal and / or Habitats Regulations Assessment.

Adrean Chavira, Lead Category Specialist, Severn Trent Water commented:

“Severn Trent places great emphasis on the role of the supply chain to deliver its business needs. We select and work with providers in the delivery of real cost-effective solutions, with the fundamental principle of providing the right product or service for the process or application every time”

“We are delighted to continue our working relationship with ESI into AMP6. We look forward to meeting our statutory requirements and implementing further enhancements to our water resource management plan to the benefit of our customers.”

Mike Streetly, Director of the Water Group at ESI Consulting said:

“We are very pleased to be awarded this framework which is a testament both to the value that we have delivered to STWL over the previous decade as well as our team work and proactive approach to engaging with the environmental challenges that STWL is facing in its current business planning cycle.”