In the light of Ofwat’s PR24 guidance to the water companies to consider whether operational, phased or modular, or more flexible options may be more appropriate for their delivery strategies, Dale Foster and Adrian Heneghan from HUBER Technology explore how the benefits of offsite Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) could be key to helping them meet demanding targets in AMP8 and beyond. 

Image: Installed HUBER S-DISC sludge thickening DfMA solution

installed at Great Dunmow

Dale Foster/ Adrian Heneghan: Last week Ofwat wrote to the water companies saying that they have more to do on developing their long-term 25 year delivery strategies – including the need to consider whether operational, phased or modular, or more flexible options may be more appropriate.

In April 2022 Ofwat published its final guidance on long-term delivery strategies for PR24 and beyond, asking them to set out their five-year AMP8 business plans in the context of a long-term 25 year delivery strategy.

The guidance highlighted the need for the water companies to explore options to meet long-term outcomes using flexible, modular or adaptive solutions where possible and efficient to do, which could be scaled up with time if appropriate. It also said that where they were proposing large construction schemes, Ofwat would expect to see “robust evidence that it would be unlikely to be efficient to instead adopt a more flexible solution.”

In our view, Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) solutions using offsite assembly will be a key part of the water companies’ toolbox to help them deliver on their AMP8 Business Plans for wastewater treatment plant upgrades. It ticks all the boxes in terms of Ofwat’s clear expectation that the water companies should in the first instance consider flexible, modular and scalable options.

DfMA operational and bottom line business benefits overview

Image: HUBER DfMA containerised S-DISC sludge thickening solution

To start with a broad overview of the key operational and bottom line business benefits DfMA solutions can offer, these include:

• Reduced costs

• Cost certainty

• Repeatability

• Improved quality/less waste or reworking

• Lower health & safety risks

• Reduced risk due to fewer & easier to manage design & construction interfaces

• Smoother handover (commissioning/optimisation)

• Operator & maintenance staff familiarity

• All prewired, fitted and tested prior to delivery

• Savings in both time and cost compared to conventionally installed solutions

• Smaller carbon footprint – Net-Zero

It’s widely acknowledged that all the water companies face significant challenges on a range of issues which will inevitably require significantly increased budgets and manpower going into the AMP8 2025-30 investment period. The companies who provide both water and wastewater infrastructure and services are undoubtedly looking at a major workload.

Upgrades and new builds for wastewater infrastructure and treatment processes a central feature of AMP8

In particular, upgrades and new builds for wastewater infrastructure and treatment processes will be a central feature of AMP8 in order to meet a range of targets announced by the Government and regulators - some with very short timescales – including:

• the Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan published in August 2022 requires water companies to deliver their largest ever environmental infrastructure investment – with an expected £56 billion of capital investment over 25 years
• forthcoming measures in the Levelling up and Regeneration Bill for the upgrade of wastewater treatment works in catchments affected by nutrient pollution and development must be in place by 2030
• the Government’s Plan for Water announced at the start of April has accelerated around £1.6 billion of new water company infrastructure delivery to start in the next 2 years includes reducing the number of spills from storm overflows (there are currently around 15,000 storm overflows in England)
• commissioning water companies to provide the first 5000+ action plans on individual storm overflows
• eliminating 10,000 storm overflow discharges per year
• delivering improvements at 14 wastewater treatment works (around £160 million to fund this)
• upgrading 160 wastewater treatment works across the country to the highest standards for phosphorus removal by 2028 ensuring that all inland and coastal storm overflows have screening controls - any overflows improved by 2030 to meet bathing water or ecological standards, also need to meet the screening requirement. Screens must be designed and well maintained so that they achieve the solid separation and flow rates that they were designed for.

DfMA solutions could deliver significant operational improvements and cost benefits at all points of the process

 Image HUBER Technology: containerised S-DISC sludge thickening plant

Wastewater treatment and processes are HUBER’s specific area of expertise and capabilities built up over many years of delivering thousands of projects both in the UK and overseas. So we’re speaking from evidence-based experience when we say that DfMA solutions are available now which could deliver significant operational improvements and cost benefits the water companies are looking for.

In the last 5 years we have sold around 500 DfMA packages in the UK – over the last decade, uptake of our DfMA solutions has grown from 5% of sales to around 20% and with AMP8 project delivery we are expecting this to increase even further.

Over the last ten years we have also continued to further develop and extend the range of DfMA solutions we offer. To take just one example, during the COVID pandemic we developed our S-DISC sludge thickening plant skid mounted solution into a fully containerised package.

Our container supplier equipped the container with heating, lighting and insulation, bi-fold doors along one side to allow full access to the plant for maintenance. Huber built the skid in parallel with the supplier fitting out the container, thereby reducing lead times. At the end of this process our fully assembled S-DISC skid was simply slid into the container and clamped in place, prior to delivery to site.

We developed the containerised S-DISC offer because we saw a great opportunity to provide customers with:

• Provide a plug & play package so the client would not need to source key from different suppliers whilst incurring additional cost & risk when integrating multiple suppliers’ kit
• Fully assemble & test in our works to reduce site commissioning phase, optimisation and handover time
• Offer reduced project delivery times through repeatability
• A solution that met water company specifications & was designed with ease of operation and maintenance in mind
• A UK standard solution with repeatability

Clear benefits of streamlined DfMA delivery process include significantly reduced turnaround times

The clear benefits of this streamlined delivery process include significantly reduced turnaround times to put something on the ground that’s already assembled – and reduced construction time and reduced manpower on site in turn reduces health and safety risks.

In addition, opting for a modular solution built offsite to install a mechanical treatment unit from HUBER delivered on a platform in a stainless steel tank, in preference to the often lengthy and complex process of constructing concrete primary settlement tanks, can deliver massive savings in terms of cost and reduced carbon.

With regard to our wider DfMA capabilities, we have a really versatile suite of solutions which are available to put in place quickly and efficiently at key points in the wastewater networks and treatment processes.

• CSOs – There are a significant number of HUBER RoK CSO screens already installed into DfMA chambers. The screens are installed in the chamber providers works before being taken to site as a single component and lowered into a pre-prepared opening. With the number of stormwater overflows to address this approach would ensure fewer and shorter road closures
• For small/medium the inlet works, our Ro9 combined screen packages with duty or duty/assist screens. This is an offsite build solution built in HUBER’s workshop and then moved into final position on site, meaning we can significantly reduce health and safety risks etc.
• For larger inlet works HUBER’s Belt Screen EscaMax® can be packaged up into tanks, which significantly reduces the need to build civils structures
• Our DSL (Drum Screens Liquid) can also be packaged in tanks removing the need to build huge primary settlement tanks which have a massive footprint, take a long time to build, require a lot of manpower on site, planning and machinery. This ticks so many boxes in terms of enabling the wastewater companies to move fast to meet the requirements being imposed on them. It’s also simplified when it comes to a choosing between a primary tank compared to a mechanical DSL which has a much smaller footprint and is easier to work with.
• Our DfMA sludge treatment solutions include Sludge Screens - STRAINPRESS®, Sludge Thickening S-DISC and S-DRUM and Sludge Dewatering - Q-PRESS® all prewired and tested prior to mounting on skid/ gantry-based solutions with installation in kiosks.

So where are the barriers?

One of the obstacles companies across the supply chain might sometimes face is challenging the water companies’ own asset standards. Depending upon the product, the suppliers can offer a standard solution that would theoretically be capable of rolling out to 90% of sites. However, by the time each water company has sought to modify it with their own specifications, the supplier is then effectively charged with delivering 10 different designs.

If they have to deviate from a standard template which can meet the requirement for 90% of projects, inevitably, this involves additional costs for design, building and manufacture.

The same issue also comes up with the Water Industry Mechanical and Electrical Specifications (WIMES) which aims to provide common mechanical and electrical specifications for the UK water sector. Again, the this is an area where the water companies will seek to modify standard WIMES compliant equipment and incorporate their own individual requirements.

Standardised modular solutions like DfMA likely to be only practical way forward for AMP8 and beyond

Photo source Defra - Map of storm overflows operating more than zero times in England

However, we think it is almost inevitable that the water companies will have to change their mindset and adopt a different approach – to meet certain outputs with tighter regulatory requirements and demanding deadlines, standardised modular solutions like DfMA are likely to be the only practical way forward.

In addition to the benefits of potentially major cost reductions, DfMA offers them the capability to roll out modular standard solutions at pace to meet their statutory obligations. When you add in the fact that in PR24 Ofwat is also looking to the water companies to implement low carbon solutions, it also provides them with the opportunity to deliver significant carbon reductions.

To sum up, there is general agreement across the water sector that a step change in approach is the only way the water companies are going to tackle major challenges going forward to AMP8 and beyond - a can do approach which looks for reasons to embrace new solutions and do things differently.

We think DfMA is an important part of this. As a supplier, HUBER has a demonstrable track record built up over years of experience. The benefits of our S-DISC containerised package are a great illustration of what an optimised DfMA solution can deliver - the benefits are givens and are exactly what DfMA can provide.

We’ve done enough of these projects in the past to know DfMA solutions work - and they work very well.

For more information about HUBER Technology’s DfMA solutions contact

Dale Foster, Business Development Manager at HUBER Technology Ltd at:

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Mobile: 07890 316059

Adrian Heneghan Business Development Manager at HUBER Technology Ltd at:

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Mob: 07540 667094