How Costain identified more than £110m of savings for water companies

Costain uses value engineering as a systemic approach to deliver lower-cost infrastructure faster and more efficiently while maintaining high performance, quality and reliability.  

The approach is being used across its AMP8 design and build projects, which includes water and wastewater programmes with Northumbrian Water, Severn Trent Water, Thames Water and Southern Water.  

Costain’s project teams are empowered to generate, analyse, and adopt ideas or techniques that help deliver projects simpler, quicker and at a lower cost. Many of these solutions involve Production Thinking, which combines modern methods of construction with innovative new technologies and techniques to boost productivity and deliver products built in a factory environment. 

These solutions are realised through several means depending on the conditions of the project. One of these is asset optimisation, whereby the performance of existing assets is maximised to promote low or no build solutions.  

Savings are also achieved through:  

Costain’s approach is driven in close collaboration with customers, alliance partners and supply chain, through integrated value engineering workshops for capital delivery teams and key stakeholders. 

More than £110m in identified cost savings

Matt Bateman, Sector Director, Water at Costain, said: “We’re working with the UK’s biggest water companies to make critical upgrades to the water system. By embedding principles such as constructability, production thinking and modern methods of construction at the earliest possible stage, we’re delivering efficient and cost-effective projects for our customers.  

“Our value engineering approach is promoting greater collaboration and knowledge sharing with our customers, enterprise partners and supply chain. Together, we’re accelerating the infrastructure improvements and upgrades needed to enhance the resilience of the UK’s water system.”