Dale Foster, Business Development Manager at wastewater technology specialists HUBER Technology UK, discusses why standardisation will be key to keeping costs down and delivering projects to tackling sewage discharges and storm overflows in AMP8.

Dale Foster: There is no escaping the deluge of unrelenting criticism the water companies are now facing to get to grips with reducing sewage discharges – which is undoubtedly set to continue into AMP8.

Coupled with the significant investment they will need to spend on solutions to sort this out, at both an operational and strategic level they are having to consider how best to address the issue as fast and efficiently as possible, without breaking the bank/ blowing the budget in the process.

The Environment Agency’s recent publication of storm overflow spill data in England for 2023 will not have helped matters. Unfortunately, the data for 2023 appears to show the sewage spills have reached record levels.

According to data submitted to the Environment Agency by the water companies that release untreated sewage into rivers and coastal waters, total discharges from the 14,000 storm overflows increased by 54% to 464,056 compared to 2022. The companies have faced a barrage of criticism as the data revealed raw sewage was discharged for more than 3.6m hours into rivers and seas last year in a 105% increase on the previous 12 months.

What seems clear is that water companies are going to have to take decisions quickly in order to get solutions in place to meet tougher regulatory targets and reduced timescales – and the luxury of taking up to 12 months or more to complete the necessary construction works is simply not an option. Pragmatism is the order of the day!

So, with the government urging water companies to go further and faster wherever possible to tackle sewage pollution, and where possible, deal with the most polluting overflows within 12 months, what solutions are available to them where screening is the best option?

There are few suppliers of CSO screens that can supply the range of sizes as HUBER can in the UK. With the longest proven operating track record in the country and over 1400 installations in place across all the water companies, HUBER is probably the market leader in this area.

It’s become increasingly apparent to us in recent months that using a significant number of standardised solutions for new CSO chamber and design specifications wherever possible is going to be one of the keyways for the water companies to make the rapid progress required at reasonable cost with the likelihood of significantly reduced timescales.

We are already starting to see a shift in approach by the water companies and starting to see a move to looking at all these projects on an overall basis in a very systematic way. There is a growing recognition that sticking with the status quo is no longer a realistic option and that simply continuing the current way of working will result in significant shortfall in outputs and accompanying supply chain paralysis. This is where standardisation comes into its own.

While it is never going to be possible to put complete standardisation in place for all CSOs, there are certainly a high number of them where this could be applied, possibly up to 80%.

Benefits of standardisation

Standardised solutions which can be quickly manufactured and put in place offers massive advantages over the traditional approach of trying to engineer a bespoke solution – with all the attendant disadvantages of long lead times, complexity, health and safety issues, more manpower needed on the ground, extended delivery and construction times, to mention just a few.

In contrast, the benefit of adopting a standardised approach provides the potential to make significant time and cost savings in key areas, including:

• Optioneering/investigation work/overall programme
• Procurement
• Improved cost certainty
• Construction = Reduced construction period
• Solutions could be delivered and installed in place within 24-48 hours
• Lead times – screens could be manufactured for stock
• Design activities
• Design review, ALM & HAZOP studies
• Commissioning & handover
• Improved quality & reduced health & safety risk

So where are we as a supplier now? We are already talking to a number of the water companies who are interested in what we can offer in terms of standardised solutions going forward.

We expect to see more of this in the coming months with demand set to increase as the water companies seek to secure capacity. We believe this will see a significant ramp up in demand for AMP8, so we are also expecting to see water companies putting frameworks in place with us in order to ensure they have access to the required levels of our resources and equipment. In this respect, greater visibility in terms of quantities required from the water companies’ side would also be very helpful.

For companies who want to test the water first, they should seriously be considering doing at least one or two standardised solutions just to see the difference it makes in terms of timescale, costs etc. Once they have visibly seen that in their own network then they can make a really informed decision.

To conclude, we are already working to ensure we have our own resources securely in place to meet the levels of demand we believe will be coming down the line. And we are happy to talk in greater detail about the undoubted benefits of standardised solutions we can provide to tackle one of the most significant investment challenges of AMP8.

Please contact Dale Foster if you would like further information on HUBER’s Storm Screen solutions- This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it