United Utilities has given the supply chain an early headsup on an upcoming £120 million AMP8 tender for continuous water quality monitoring due to be issued in September.

Under Section 82 of the Environment Act the water companies have a duty to protect the environment from the effects of discharges from storm overflows and wastewater treatment works and are required to monitor the quality of water potentially affected by upstream and downstream discharges from these assets.

This requires the monitoring of a number of parameters, including levels of dissolved oxygen, temperature and pH values, turbidity, levels of ammonia, levels of conductivity, and anything else specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State. The measurements will typically be made in rivers and/or a local measurement kiosk.

United Utilities operate approximately 2300 Combined Sewer Overflows, and 575 wastewater treatment works which are impacted by the new requirement.

The overall numbers of installations for AMP8 (2025-2030) are confirmed at 633 to provide 25% coverage, while the remaining 75% will be delivered in AMP9 (2030-2035). 

United Utilities are requesting evidence for equipment operating in such an environment both during routine operation and under exceptional conditions such as storms. Appropriate and independent 3rd party validation of sensor monitoring technology performance would be of interest at this stage. It is expected that the systems will be mounted directly in the river or will required a sample pumping into a kiosk.

All monitoring equipment must have its own power supply, ancillaries and logger/telemetry unit with data to be exportable via API and other common interfaces. The application also requires the following functionality to:

• Continuously monitor and log data (every 15 minutes) in river levels as low as 40mm.
• Provide a telemetry interface and a public facing portal which can display values in near real time and provide reporting capabilities.

United Utilities are looking for indicative costs, per installation, based on the following procurement routes:

• Supply of instrumentation - Design, build and installation of instrumentation sampling kiosks - Service and maintenance of the above at the mandated 4 weekly intervals
• Provision, management and administration of telemetry and a web based portal for the above. - Readings taken every 15 minutes. All readings to be transmitted every 20 minutes.
• Supply to monitor equipment health and generated data on a continual basis and report anomalies to United Utilities.
• Instrumentation and the monitoring arrangement must be suitable for monitoring the required parameters in an appropriate range for the application. Solutions may be based on multi-parameter sondes, process instrumentation or chemistry analysers or a combination of either.

All technologies to be provided must comply with the DEFRA Continuous Water Quality Programme Interim Technical Standard V1.0 Issue 1.0 August 2024. In addition, all installations must also comply with Environment Agency Regulatory Position Statement 333 Installing Small Scale Monitoring Instruments and Associated Equipment Alongside In Main River Watercourses 11th March 2025.

Unite Utilities is looking for two installation solutions:

1. For planning pumped kiosk-based systems should be used (Option 1).
2. In river monitoring via stilling tube (Option 2).

United Utilities is now seeking to understand:

• Proposed solutions
• Costs
• Interest to provide or ability to provide all elements associated
• Risks
• Volume supply capacity per month/year
• Accuracy/Uncertainty
• Repeatability
• Maintenance intervals
• Integration

The water company will also require interested parties to work with Defra and regulators to establish an accredited quality system for the calibration and maintenance of real time continuous water quality monitors. Further detail on governance and assurance requirements is expected in the technical guidance and implementing legislation.

In addition, the need to comply with an industry-wide accreditation process (such as MCERTS) should be accounted for which will likely require product certification prior to use at cost to the supplier.

Current total estimated value is £120 million(inc VAT) and estimated start and end contract dates are 1 November 2025 to 1 April 2030 - at this stage all values and dates are indicative.

United Utilities expects to publish a formal tender notice at the start of September 2025.