Southern Water has gone out to tender with a major AMP8 contract for Alternative Metering Services with an estimated value of £300 million.

As part of Southern Water’s AMP8 (2025-2030) delivery programme, the water company is aiming to reduce overall demand for water, by cutting leakage by 13% and helping customers become even more efficient by installing more than 1 million smart meters.

By 2030, the appointed supplier would upgrade Southern Water’s household meter estate of around 934k household meters, and 52k non-household meters, toSmart AMI enabled meters, incorporated into the service. The utility expects a mix of standard, non-standard, and complex work typeswill be managed through this arrangement with the supplier operating across Southern Water’s supply area, for household and non-household premises.

The successful bidder would manage the overall service provision as a prime contractor and install and commission, operate and maintain the Alternative Metering Service, inclusive of smart AMI meters and devices, communications network, and data pass back provision to Southern Water.

The bidder will be responsible for:

• Supply of Smart AMI water meters warranted for 15 years
• Planning, pre-installation surveys and meter installation for standard works i.e. meters to 934k household properties where the meter is situated externally (86%), or internally (14%)
• Planning, pre-installation surveys and meter installation for non-standard works i.e. 45.2k meters to non-household properties where the meter is situated externally (80%), or internally (20%)
• Planning, pre-installation surveys and meter installation of meters for complex works i.e. 6.4k meters over 20mm in size, 34k new meter installations to unmetered sites, or boundary box replacements in the highway/verges (excavation, backfill and reinstatement, traffic management)
• Communications network (non-dedicated to Southern Water) recording 24 hourly reads per day and transmitting the data once per day
• Adoption of c.9k Smart meters from developers installing new services (adoption of legacy meter base is out of scope of this procurement)
• Smart meter and network issue resolution

Southern Water already has a high percentage of metered customers (88%) through its pioneering Universal Metering Programme.The successful bidder would own the meter assets, with Southern Water paying service fees over the term.

In total, the number of Smart meter assets in the scope of the full service is 1.02m. For the installation phase, the award will be for 50% of the volume initially on contract award (Year 1), with the remaining volume to be achieved through meeting overall performance targets in subsequent years in the installation phase.

The Contract is expected to be awarded in November 2024 and will be for a total period of 20 years, with the Smart meters being deployed within the first 5 years “installation phase”.

Time limit for receipt of tenders or requests to participate is 7 June 2024 – click here to access the tender documentation