Last week saw the completion of a critical £7 million project at our Barcombe Water Treatment Works in Sussex that has been years in the making, marking a huge success for both ourselves and our partners, despite many thinking the high-risk project was too difficult to undertake.
The strategic importance of this site, which is vital to the delivery of fresh drinking water to around 250,000 people in the Sussex area, meant that the work conducted had to be incredibly precise. Years of planning and enabling work was carried out ahead of the main three-and-a-half-week project.
A key drinking water storage tank needed to undergo repair and maintenance work, however because of its strategic importance had been near impossible to undertake previously without shutting the site down which would have resulted in customers being without supply for considerable time.
Matthew Dean, Head of Operations for Sussex said: “This is an enormous success on a project that we are very proud to have completed. There had been people doubting that it was even possible, but we have succeeded due to the incredibly hard work of our teams and our contractors working around the clock.”
In 2019, in order to prepare for shutting the tank down for work without a loss of supply, a temporary treatment facility had been brought in and installed. It was vitally important that this temporary site worked as without the use of the main contact tank, the facility would be holding 12 million litres less water every day.
To minimise any risk, four scenario simulations were carried out in order to monitor our ability to keep providing Sussex with water during the works.
Matthew continued: “The final phase started in mid-April, after our final stress-tests on the new tank. We saw construction and security teams working 24/7 to get the site working to its full potential. It was a monumental effort from everyone involved. The incident team had been meeting twice a day for the last month and the crews and the security manning the site throughout the nights. It is a massive success that has been years in the making.”
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