South West Water has gone out to tender with an AMP8 contract for water catchment management framework with an estimated value of £10 million.

The water company is seeking to enter into a framework with multiple suppliers for the supply and management of water catchment services.

South West Water is acting as a centralised purchasing body on behalf of both itself, other regulated utilities and other subsidiaries within the Pennon Group for a five year period from May 2025 to 31 March 2030 with the possibility to extend the framework contract for a further three years.

It is anticipated that the management of the framework will be conducted for the Group by South West Water.

Upstream Thinking (UST) is Pennon Group’s ambitious and innovative Natural Capital-based approach to investment in resilience. Since 2006 this evolving Catchment Management programme has focused on protecting the rivers, reservoirs and aquifers of the region from pollution and detrimental environmental landscape impacts, together with supporting flora and fauna.

The principal risk that UST seeks to address is the inherent uncertainty of deriving drinking water for treatment from surface waters, and from the lower reaches of large and variable river systems.

The contract is being tendered in two separate Lots.

• Lot 1 - Water Catchment Management: Key Deliver Partners - £7 million
• Lot 2 -  Water Catchment Management: Approved Providers - £3 million

The work builds on the existing contracts / frameworks which were put in place for AMP7 for both Bristol Water and South West Water. The new framework seeks to combine these into one comprehensive framework which will allow for the whole of the business to utilise for catchment management partnership delivery, including Upstream Thinking and Green First. It will also incorporate the new performance measures as outlined in the Water Industry National Environment Programme (WINEP) requirements.

Specifically for Upstream Thinking this includes expanding the programme into new drinking water catchments, to deliver against both WINEP outcomes and the new OFWAT Biodiversity performance commitment.

The Upstream Thinking programme also delivers against other AMP8 business plan outcomes including planting 300,000 trees, renaturalising waterways for wildlife, control invasive non-native species, and the 1,000 ponds initiative.

The focus of the framework will be to engage local partnership delivery specialists who have developed significant knowledge of the catchments while creating widespread support and trust from land owners and managers.

The partnership element is a key part of the framework and the ability to bring match funding, co-benefits and other in-kind contributions and support to the shared delivery outcomes will be a key factor.

For this delivery farm advisers within the organisations act as honest brokers in the catchment and engage with farmers to provide advice, business planning, and grants for farm infrastructure and habitat restoration to bring about behaviour change and Natural Capital improvements. This increases the flow of Environmental Goods and Services (EGS) from farms to deliver improved business performance in the following areas:

• Pro-active management of Drinking Water Protected Areas at risk and increased raw water usability due to reduced pollutant loads with sustained and elevated base-flows
• Drinking Water Treatment Works efficiency due to avoidance of shutdowns from pollution, taste, and odour failures, together with lower asset running costs
• Downstream environmental protection for wastewater treatment and networks, with improved functionality due to reduced catchment peak-flows with impacts on Combined Sewer Outlet (CSO) discharge frequency and volumes
• Long term business protection against future uncertainty (e.g. climate change and emerging catchment threats such as new chemicals which may enter the water environment), statutory environmental protection and delivery of wider environmental responsibilities (e.g. the Environment Agency's  WINEP).

Where applicable, the delivery partners will need to demonstrate past ability to use SWW funds to access and deliver 3rd party funding streams to support the SWW investments in these catchments - this approach was not previously undertaken in Bristol Water catchments.

Tenders or requests to participate must be submitted electronically via https://pennon.esourcingportal.com/current_opportunities.cfm

Time limit for receipt of tenders or requests to participate is 19 March 2025 – click here to access the tender documentation.