Kevin Ockwell from HUBER Technology discusses how having a planned hire strategy in place can help water companies get the most out of their maintenance budgets during AMP7.

HUBER Ro9 Combined screen on hire available in a tank or inlet channel mounted

Kevin Ockwell: Maintenance was always set to be a key feature in water company spend in AMP7 – and our own experience to date since the start of the investment programme is bearing this out.

The shift in investment towards maintenance-led activities means the water companies are looking to strengthen and extend the life of their existing assets via their maintenance spend, rather than resorting to replacements involving up-front capital spend from their capital budgets.

What is interesting is the potential that a strategic and targeted approach to equipment hire can play as part of a systematic programme to strengthen the resilience of a company’s asset base.

Broadly speaking, customers use hire equipment for three reasons in particular:

• Emergency works - failures of equipment where a temporary unit in is needed urgently to ensure no loss in operational capability
• Planned works – equipment is required while assets are being upgraded or new plant is under construction
• Equipment trials - trialling a piece of equipment in order to get a real understanding of how sites and facilities are operating and how new equipment can deliver improvements prior to committing to a purchase

We have already optimised our hire equipment fleet so it can be operational virtually as soon as it’s in place.

This includes re-engineered more flexible cabling, interconnecting plug and socket and new control panels with automation and telemetry monitoring built in as standard.

From a strategic point of view, the use of hire equipment is evolving – so in addition to scheduled maintenance, we are seeing that the scope of hiring is extending to trials work in a more systematic way.

Using maintenance budgets in this way means that instead of just constantly paying for repair after repair, the water companies can realise the value of hiring a machine and have a guaranteed much more reliable asset in place, coupled with remote support, whenever necessary.

We have generally made all our hire equipment more optimised and robust with the demands placed on hire equipment primarily in mind - equipment that is specifically designed to be moved around and used in a more agile way.

To take our Ro9 inlet screens for example where we have expanded our hire fleet capability. We now have a wide range of options of the Ro9 300, 500 and 700 to be utilized direct into inlet channels or tank mounted with hand rake bypass for over pumping.

For customers undertaking planned activity on inlet works we can provide all the equipment and support they need to create a temporary network in order to allow civils modifications to their existing asset base.

The other added advantage for our customers of course is that as an OEM supplier we provide hire equipment on a like for like basis – so we only hire out certified OEM equipment with an OEM approach.

Our customers benefit from:

• Reduced downtime
• Reduced costs
• Structured service programme
• Convenient and flexible temporary solution as and when required

To sum up, strengthening asset resilience in AMP7 is one of Ofwat’s four priorities for the water companies - and we have strengthened our in-house strategic hire capability in order to help them meet those requirements in both operational and financial terms.

Kevin Ockwell is Sales / Aftersales Manager HUBER Technology

For further information on hire equipment, please visit the website at www.huber.co.uk