Project: Waste Water Treatment Plant

As a result of increasing controls by the local Utility provider on waste water discharged into foul sewers a large local company needed to treat their waste water and remove various chemical contaminants from it before discharging into the foul drainage system.

The client procured their own large capacity treatment plant and engaged Industrial Contracting Services Ltd to carry out the extensive civil engineering work for the installation of the new plant and to have overall site management responsibility as Principle Contractor for the project.

As a result of our experience in this role for various other industrial  clients we were able to offer a complete package to design and build the civils works for this scheme and fulfil the role of Principle Contractor for this multi million pound project

As the clients production facility is very busy and is a large local employer it was a requirement that the planning and operation of the project ensured that the staff were not disrupted and production was maintained.

Ensuring that production levels were not negatively impacted by the project and minimising disruption to the clients employees meant that the project needed very careful day to day planning involving the clients project team, our designers and project management as well as the Utility provider who needed to approve all works before and after they were carried out.

The project involved the following works:

• Removal and partial re construction of some existing structures.
• Bulk excavation of the site for the new concrete base, tanks and bund wall.
• Construction of the underground pumping chamber.
• Installation of new high capacity drainage runs.
• Construction of the concrete base and bund walls.
• Installation of the new plant and tanks.
• Connection work and testing of the new systems and tanks.

During the construction phase we discovered an old heavy duty power cable running through the site that was not in the location it was thought to be and this meant that there was reduced working space in an area were we had to construct a 6m deep chamber, a further complication was that this chamber had to be completely waterproof to avoid contamination of ground water in the area.

After exploring various options of sheet  piling and bulk excavation we eventually settled on using a jacking system usually used in tunnelling and this enabled us to successfully construct the pit in a very confined space without disturbing the HV mains cable.

Much of this construction was also close to the site boundary adjacent to neighbouring Victorian mill buildings so care had to be taken to avoid vibration, the proximity to these other buildings under separate ownership also meant that we had to comply with the “Party wall Act” that is government legislation to protect adjacent property during construction work.

The site had also a long history of industrial use so after analysis of the excavated spoil it was found to be contaminated which placed restriction on the excavation and disposal.

Despite these challenges we are pleased to say the project was completed to the satisfaction of the client and the Utility provider who were very complimentary about how we achieved a very satisfactory solution to a challenging issue.