New ways of working have helped Costain cut the time needed to improve Severn Trent Water’s Strensham water treatment works in Worcestershire by 50%.
Driven by the challenging efficiency targets set by the client, Costain and design partners MWH have implemented factory thinking, lean engineering and collaborative planning techniques to reduce the time needed to refurbish each of 21 rapid gravity filters from 40 days to just 20.
Andy King, Commercial Manager for Severn Trent Water, commented:
“In order to achieve the AMP5 efficiencies a different way of working needed to be undertaken. It was great to see how the project team have responded to the challenge.”
“The site has to remain operational at all times so speed is of the essence when it comes to carrying out the work,” said Matt Crabtree, Costain Water Sector Director.
Temporary access platforms, manufactured off site, have provided safe access into the filters during the refurbishment. The platforms have also eliminated the need to build access scaffolding within each filter providing a time saving of four days per filter. The structural steelwork, pipe supports, pipework, hand-railing and flooring all come assembled as one complete unit minimising on site working at height issues.
The pipework is also pressure tested off site so, once a filter is offline, it can be quickly assembled. Once the team has completed a filter, it analyses the work done and looks at how it could do the next one better. “That way,” said Matt, “the potential for improvement is two-fold – from the factory thinking and the lean collaborative planning approach.”
The £8.6 million Strensham contract is one of the first where Costain has adopted a more standardised, systems-led engineering approach. Matt Crabtree said that Costain would be looking to use the techniques on similar projects in AMP6 in order to help customers deliver new assets more effectively.
Chris Vice, Costain Delivery Manager for the project said using a collaborative planning approach and lessons learned has enabled Costain to reduce the time taken to refurbish each filter by 50%. This in turn enabled the firm to reduce the overall duration from an initial 88 weeks to the current planned 45 weeks.
The Strensham contract is on course to be completed early next year.
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