Northumbrian Water Group’s Innovation Festival

Northumbrian Water Group’s Innovation Festival is returning for 2024 with a number of new problems we’re hoping to solve. One of these, sponsored by WRc Group, is looking at:

Lining Up Value: How do we develop a value proposition to increase the commercial viability of mains spray lining?

Ongoing mains replacement is required to keep water mains healthy and allow burst and leakage rates to decrease. Structural lining is a good alternative that can extend asset life by 30+years at a much lower unit rate that mains replacement. However, cost efficiency is key so alternatives are also being explored.

The Water Industry Specification for Water Mains Relining has recently been finalised by the Expert In-Situ Lining Group (EILG). In recent years the barrier to it’s increased up-take is the Water Industry Performance Commitment to get customers back into supply in <3 hours. Ofwat has so far refused to see this type of planned work as an exception to this measure.

The opportunity to improve this situation lies in the feasibility, investigate, and define stages on any relining work rather than the spray lining application itself. Giving contractors access to infrastructure early will allow them to innovate in the preparation stages around ground conditions, pipe materials and pipe depth to help improve the overall relining process and help deliver much increased volumes of work.

This four day sprint taking place at Newcastle Racecourse would be of interest for those involved in Water Networks, Asset Teams / IDS, Supply chain / contractors, Regulators e.g. Ofwat, Water Quality.

If you’d like to join us to help solve this issue then please register before 30-Jun-24.