By ashleykaren
Southern Water Services has revealed the next phase of its market engagement activity for a building project to deliver long-term water supply resilience to Hampshire.
The utility provider’s WfLH (Water for Life Hampshire) program intends to construct a more incredible water resilience, particularly during dry weather and drought.
The £587M project seeks to safeguard Hampshire’s sensitive chalk stream rivers while preserving water supplies in the face of water shortages because of climate change and a growing population across the area.
Presently, Southern Water is analyzing different options for a solution. The current best choice concerns taking more water from the planned Havant Thicket Reservoir to its Otterbourne Water Supply Works, which would need an element of tunnelling.
Southern Water is developing this option with Portsmouth Water, which will need to build a water recycling plant located in the south of Havant and related pipelines to and from the reservoir.
Water recycling plants use advanced treatment techniques to transform treated wastewater into highly purified source water. Special membranes are used for removing salts and a range of other impurities.
The recommendations are not part of the existing agreed programs for a new £120M Havant Thicket Reservoir. The plan is a partnership between Portsmouth Water and Southern Water which received the go-ahead in June 2021.
From May 2022, the firm conducted surveys to examine the geological and structural – plus the physical and mechanical – features of the ground under the surface through the pipeline corridor and at the suggested water recycling plant site.
After a six-week consultation which was done this summer, Southern Water expressed it would do additional technical and environmental work to develop a more precise design. It intends to present this design, alongside details from its initial environmental work, at another consultation in 2023.
Southern Water issued a PIN (periodic indicative notice) on 4 November as part of its proceeding market activity. It posted an elementary PIN in February to pursue market views and set out its procurement and commercial method for the project.
As reported, the field of services for coming contract announcements on the project could contain:
- construction work for bridges, tunnels, shafts and subways
- construction work for water and sewage pipelines
- drinking water treatment plant construction work
- repair and maintenance services
- tunnel operation services
- engineering design services for the construction of civil engineering works.
As declared, Southern Water will use a competitively appointed provider (CAP) to supply the project, which will acquire Ofwat’s new direct procurement for customers’ approach. Southern Water is doing different market engagement activities to support this procurement.
Market engagement will take the form of a virtual town hall session on Friday, 9 December 2022. It will be followed by several virtual one-to-one meetings in January or early February 2023.
