Yorkshire Water has gone out to tender with a contract for clean water network repair and maintenance services worth an estimated £80 million.

The water company is inviting expressions of interest for a future tender to provide planned/reactive/emergency repair and maintenance works for its clean water network.

At this point in time the utility currently envisages that the contract will be tendered in the following Lots:

Lot 1: Emergency Reactive Work (from 2 to 48-Hour Priority) (£160 million)

Lot 2: Planned Reactive Work (from 48-Hour to 84-Day Priority); (£360 million)

Lot 3: Developer Services Work (£120 million)

Lot 4: Metering Work (£160 million)

Lot 5: Clean R&M Innovation Marketplace — YWS are also looking to create a marketplace for innovative solutions for repair and maintenance on the clean water network.

Lots 1 and 2 cover a wide range of services, including mains diversions and repairs/replacement (including trunk mains), , stop taps, replacement and repairs of supply/comms pipes , replacements and installations of valves, hydrants and ferrules, bulk meters and lead pipe replacement.

Lot 2 also includes network operation and maintenance, together with leakage detection.

Lot 3 Developer Services Work includes clean only, clean and waste new connections, clean only main laying and non-standard work, e.g. clean and waste mains diversion for the purposes of developer work.

Lot 4 Metering Work includes procurement and storage of meters, domestic and non-domestic meter replacement/installation/repair, domestic and non domestic internal plumbing work and meter reading.

Through Lot 5 - Clean Water Networks R&M Innovation Marketplace - Yorkshire Water is looking to create a marketplace for innovative solutions for repair and maintenance on a clean water network.

The water company is seeking suppliers who can provide solutions capable of offering transformative outcomes in the end to end repair and maintenance process using non-conventional techniques. The marketplace will utilise mini competitions to procure these solutions. Only suppliers who have been admitted to lot 5 will be eligible to take part in the mini competitions.

The scope of mini competitions includes solutions in the following areas:

• dig improvement — e.g. use of keyhole techniques/no-dig approaches, use of long handled tools, suction excavation, pipe pulling, use of sustainable aggregates, etc.;
• dig avoidance — e.g in-pipe repair, repair and renewal of communication/supply pipes, self-repairing materials, 3D printing, robotic/internal drone detection and repair;
• other potential areas of interest (in particular, where available as part of an integrated R&M innovation solution);
• leak prediction, detection and triage (including both hardware and software aspects, and potentially service aspects);
• technology led condition assessment and network maintenance.

The water company is looking to appoint between 50 to 200 suppliers to Lot 5.

Initial contract term for Lots 1 to 4 is 4 years, with a further 4 year extension option. The initial contract period for Lot 5 is 3 years, with a further extension option of up to 5 years ( 3 + 2 years).

Time limit for receipt of tenders or requests to participate is 20^th April 2020 – click here to access the tender documentation.

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