Thames Water has published its Trunk Mains Strategic Review which sets out a clear action plan, following a series of major bursts on its trunk mains last year.
The water company suffered eight separate bursts on its trunk main network towards the end of 2016 which caused significant damage to homes and businesses, traffic disruption, and temporary loss of water supply.
The report from the UK’s largest water and waste water provider identifies 15 clear commitments mapped from the 80 recommendations contained the Trunk Mains Forensic Review, led by Paul Cuttill OBE, which was published earlier this year.
The commitments are designed to minimise the risk of similar bursts happening in the future, and to improve the business’ response to such emergencies which Thames will deliver through an implementation phase over the next 18 months.
The publication of the review comes as Thames Water is set to launch its new booklet ‘Putting things right’, which clearly outlines the support available for customers following incidents of this sort, including answers to more detailed matters including insurance.
Thames Water’s Chief Executive Officer, Steve Robertson, said:
“I fully understand how disruptive and upsetting these events have been for our customers and that’s why we’re determined to learn lessons.
“This thorough review commits us to a number of changes right across our business, many of which we’ve already begun to implement. We’ll be communicating our action plan with affected communities, customers and stakeholders to ensure we’re being held to the highest standards.”
The 15 commitments have been made across the following five themes in the Trunk Mains Strategic Review:
Theme 1 - Operating model: The operating model theme contains commitments that will improve the way in which the business is structured, the roles, accountabilities and responsibilities, and the governance to support this. The commitments in this theme build on work already done to develop and implement a ‘Single System Owner’ model for end to end asset management that is in line with international standards for asset management.
Theme 2 - Monitoring: The monitoring theme commitments will renew the trunk mains monitoring strategy, improve the use of monitoring data to proactively and reactively identify bursts, and achieve completion of the existing monitoring equipment installation programme.
Theme 3 - Asset information: The asset information theme commitments will improve the way that data on the trunk mains asset is collected, assured, viewed and analysed.
Theme 4 - Risk management: The risk management commitments will improve the way that Thames predicts, models and understands the probability of a trunk mains burst and the consequence of such a burst.
Theme 5 - Event response: The event response commitments will develop and strengthen incident and emergency management capability, including the operational response to containing the burst and repairing the trunk mains, customer communications and care, stakeholder engagement, and operational rotas and working patterns.
Thames’ long term strategy is to replace the 3,200km trunk mains network, starting with those parts where the risk of a failure is greatest. The utility said better information about the network and better risk models will help improve the detailed planning required. Thames’ AMP7 business plan for the period from 2020 onwards will be released for consultation in 2018 and will include options for a comprehensive long term programme of replacement.
Click here to download the Trunk Mains Strategic Review
Click here to download the Trunk Mains Forensic Review
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