24 September 2014

Staff on the e5 Core Sludge Team programme of works at Severn Trent Water (STW) plants in the East Midlands have been rewarded for their efforts in improving facilities at sites around the region.

The team – comprising Costain, MWH, Mott Macdonald Bentley, North Midland Construction plus client STW – took the Team Achievement category prize in the ICE East Midlands Merit Awards presentation ceremony near Nottingham. 

The e5 programme of works involves a considerable amount of common design elements over several sludge projects in the East Midlands. The Core Team was set up to help ensure that the dangers of ‘reinventing the wheel’ at individual sites were minimised.

The programme involved the provision of new sludge digestion facilities at several STW sites. “We sat down and worked through the common design items,” said Costain Project Manager, Sean Lang.

While waste from wastewater treatment plants seems an unpromising material, it can be used to offset the costs of running the facilities: “All the sludge that comes in from sewage treatment works gets digested and the bio-gas created is used to generate power and heat to help run the sites.

“It’s relatively commonly-used technology throughout the industry but some elements were new to our client. For example, we used epoxy-coated steel tanks as opposed to the usual reinforced concrete tanks. That had a significant saving across the programme of works, in terms of time, safer construction and money.”

All the projects took place within the AMP5 period, which runs from 2010-15. Some have been completed, while others have still to be finished. The site at Wanlip, for example, which is a contract worth roughly £31.5 million, still has around 12 months to run.

The latest prize will join the Considerate Constructors Scheme bronze award and the RoSPA Gold Award in the team’s trophy cabinet.

 

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