Tuesday 19 March 2019

Thames Water invests £200m to tackle leakage issues

Thames Water has awarded contracts worth £200 million in total to tackle leakage issues across London and the Thames Valley.

It has signed agreements with suppliers for an eight-year period, which is expected to save the equivalent of 172 Olympic swimming pools of water every day.

Teams will be using a range of leak detection measures, including traditional sound tests, acoustic logging and desktop modelling to help the water company reduce its leakage by 15% by 2025.

The new contracts have enabled Thames Water to target higher leakage savings for 2019/20 from 370 million litres of water a day (mld) saved to 430mld – an increase of 16%.

Under the agreements, suppliers, including Hydrosave, PN Daly, RPS, Morrison Utility Services, Crowder Consulting and Teccura, will be required to attend quarterly innovation forums to share the latest idea, techniques and best practice.

Four offenders were recently “heavily fined” in court after illegally tapping into Thames Water’s supplies and stealing water.

The water company said hundreds of thousands of litres of water are lost every day and everything stolen is classed as leakage.

In the first two months of 2019, more than 14,000 leaks were repaired by the firm.

Lawrence Gosden, Chief Operating Officer at Thames Water said: “Reducing leakage is a top priority for the company and our customers so it’s vital we have the very best people working on it. Our partners will be challenged to be as innovative as possible to find leaks so we can get them fixed, especially those that are hidden underground and not visible from the surface.

“We are focused on ensuring our network is fit to serve our customers now and into the future and I’m confident investment on this scale will help us to achieve our ambitious targets.”

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