Aqueducts & Large Diameter Trunk Mains Clean & Maintain ...

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APM Project Management Awards WINNER’S CASE STUDY Objectives As part of an asset management plan from 2005 – 2010, UU invested £3.1 billion in a wide range of asset and infrastructure improvements through a number of targeted capital investment programmes. The aqueducts and large diameter trunk mains (LDTM) clean and maintain programme was part of this and had two main objectives: 1. To plan, design, develop and implement a major programme of inspection, maintenance and repairs on UU’s two main aqueducts, the Haweswater (HA) and the Thirlmere (TA), and associated infrastructure, which transfer water from the Lake District through to areas of Cumbria, Lancashire and Manchester. 2. To clean and refurbish six LDTMs reducing levels of levels of iron and manganese, which are harmless but can discolour the water supplied to customers. Resources The project included the largest-scale cleaning work ever undertaken in the UK water industry. Over £143 million was invested across more than 30 co-related projects over a five-year period. Up to 100 people worked in the TA at any one time, presenting a huge exercise in logistics, resource and health and safety planning. The LDTM projects were delivered using project manager led project centric teams comprising members from three organisations, UU and strategic partners Balfour Beatty Utility Solutions and Montgomery Watson Harza. The team members were drawn from cross business resource pools of specialist skills, including co-located project management, co-ordination, control, design, health, safety and environmental teams to ensure efficiency and effectiveness through open communication. Due to the high risk, high profile nature of this programme a governance board was established. This provided an opportunity for reporting the programme and its co-related projects status, managing senior management expectations and allowed risks and issues to be escalated to the correct level within the organisation quickly and efficiently. Challenges The programme had one major constraint – the works could not affect supplies to customers. This meant a fresh approach to project prioritisation, resource planning, risk management, integration and scheduling. Other challenges were that the majority of these strategically important assets were over 50 years old (and in some cases over 100 years old) and had never been taken out of service for significant maintenance before, and the nature, scale and uncertainty of unforeseen events, such as extremes of weather, major bursts, and third party damage, and issues that required reactive maintenance put pressure on the overall annual budget and caused project priorities to be frequently re-assessed. 2
APM Project Management Awards WINNER’S CASE STUDY Co-ordination Due to the scale of inspection and maintenance work required and the need to avoid disrupting customers’ supplies, the aqueduct maintenance and LDTM cleaning projects were carried out in phases over a five-year period. Work on the two aqueducts – the Thirlmere one being more than 115 years old – included investigation, survey and structural repairs. Targeted repairs were carried out along the entire 134-kilometre length of the TA, but the aqueduct could only be taken out of service for one month each autumn. <strong>Clean</strong>ing of the LDTM’s also required complex planning and execution. For instance, the first mains - supplying more than 1.7 million customers – required two 25 kilometre mains to be cleaned that were large enough for an adult to walk through. Access was necessary at more than 80 locations, requiring substantial third-party negotiations and more than 15 kilometres of access track. Only one main could be out of service at any one time and cleaning work was restricted to the autumn/winter period. It was also vital that nearby mains were not affected or damaged to ensure customer supplies were maintained. Comprehensive contingency plans were required for each scheme to ensure that assets could be repaired or returned to service quickly should an incident or emergency occur within the regional system. Innovative approaches and techniques also had to be developed to scale up existing technologies to meet the demands of the programme and generate cost efficiencies. Specialist equipment was developed, including a CCTV device that was floated through the live systems to identify areas of concern requiring further investigation and low ground pressure vehicles allowing jetting and removal of wash water from up to 1km of LDTM. Successes £8 million efficiency savings. Improved customer service standards. Better water quality. Reduced health and safety risk to employees and third parties by upgraded access. Improved structural integrity of the aqueducts. Improved regional network response to incidents such as bursts, with faster diversions, and altered flow rates to minimise water loss and maintain customer supplies without major discolouration. Delivered with no lost time accidents and no significant impact on customer levels of service. 3
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