Southern Water has launched Phase 2 of its ongoing market engagement for the £587 million Hampshire Water Transfer and Water Recycling Project and published a Request for Information to help inform and develop the company’s current understanding of the market.

The project is one of the 18 solutions set out in the Regulators’ Alliance for Progressing Infrastructure Development RAPID programme. The Alliance was set up in 2019 to analyse the feasibility of nationally strategic supply solutions and help facilitate the development and funding of new large-scale strategic water supply solutions by the water companies.

Southern Water is planning to deliver the construction project to provide long-term water supply resilience to Hampshire - which will include tunnelling.

The water company will utilise a Competitively Appointed Provider (CAP) to deliver the project which will be procured using Ofwat’s new Direct Procurement for Customers (DPC) approach.

Southern Water is looking to continually test the market's interest for the Design, Build, Financing, Maintenance and Operation of the project - market engagement will be over several phases over several months. The utility is keen to keep the market updated on progress as the project matures.

Southern Water would like to gain market insight on a range of topics which are critical to the programme, including but not limited to Commercial, illustrative Design and Procurement. There will be an opportunity for suppliers to ask further questions prior to, during, and after the engagement sessions.

This latest phase of market engagement will take the form of a virtual ‘Town Hall’ session at 2.30pm on Friday 9th December 2022, followed by a series of virtual one to one meetings in January/early February 2023 via Microsoft Teams.

As this is a follow up to previous engagements, Southern Water is encouraging suppliers to attend the one-to-one meetings with their potential partnering organisations.

Southern Water will also provide a pre-read pack as part of the engagement and has also developed a list of questions relating to the information provided.

The water company said:

“Any answers provided to this Request for Information (RFI) will be valuable and will be used, where necessary, to inform and develop Southern Water’s current understanding of the market and how we can best deliver value for money to our customers.”

Deadline for responding to the RFI is Friday 2nd December 2022 – click here to access the RFI documentation.

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