Water quality engineer Panton McLeod has celebrated another milestone in the Scottish water sector after revisiting the scene of its first-ever robotic cleaning project.

The Borders-based firm has revisited a service reservoir in the Campbeltown area – one of a network of huge underground tanks used to store drinking water in Scotland – to ensure that water supplies continue to remain at the highest quality levels for customers in the region. The project, which involved inspecting the interior of the tank for damage and turbidity issues, represented a landmark piece of work for Panton McLeod - as the facility was the scene of the firm’s first-ever “live” clean with its innovative robotic technology in Scotland.

In 2004 the firm carried out the groundbreaking cleaning work in Campbeltown with its VR600 robot - a large-tracked machine that is able to remove debris and sediment from the floor of a reservoir while it is still in active service, rather than having to drain the facility in order to clean it.

The firm believes that its latest robotic project shows that the machines have become an integral part of cleaning and inspection services the UK water industry. It is now looking forward to returning to other facilities across the country to carry out follow up work on facilities that have previously been cleaned and inspected with the robot technology.

Panton McLeod's VR600 robot

Paul Henderson, Panton McLeod’s operations director, said:

“We’ve been using our underwater inspection robots for many years in Scotland, as well as across the rest of the UK, and we have received some glowing testimonies from some of the biggest names in the water sector.

“However, on many occasions it felt as if we were just trying to showcase the robot’s capabilities to demonstrate how they could be deployed, rather than just getting on with the work in hand.

“We've done many projects with big companies like Scottish Water and Severn Trent Water in recent years but this latest work in Campbeltown is, however, a big landmark for Panton McLeod. We’ve had seven successful years providing our robot services in Scotland and we’re now at the point where we’re being invited back to re-assess facilities that we have previously cleaned with the machines.

“These big underground tanks are thoroughly cleaned every five or ten years, so the fact that we’ve been invited back to utilise our VR600 machine once more is a great boost for the whole team. It reaffirms how long we’ve been using these machines and how they have become accepted in the water sector since we first started using them."

Panton McLeod, which has offices in the Scottish Borders, Nottingham and the United States, is one of the best-known names in the water industry, working with the biggest companies on the inspection, cleaning and repair of drinking water structures. It uses two innovative machines in its underwater inspection division – the large-tracked VR600 floor cleaning robot and a smaller ROV inspection machine.

The VR600 is manoeuvred along the floor of a service reservoir and pumps out any sediment or impurities in the water. It can also be used to inspect the condition of the water tanks, including checking the walls and pipework for corrosion or damage.

The ROV is a smaller robot used to inspect the whole condition of the water tank, including checking the walls and pipework for corrosion or damage and is capable of studying the condition of the roof soffit through the surface of the water.