LiMA team wins £165m water projects

Our team at LiMA are really hitting the ground running at the start of 2018, securing work across a number of water and waste water projects in the North West of England. Concerted effort brought the contracts up to £165m.

Contracts cover the Blackburn Batch, Medlock Quality Programme Batch (MQP) in East Manchester, Nantwich Waste water Treatment Works (WwTW), Crewe WwTW, and the Water Framework Directive (WFD) projects, with all of the awards building on our framework relationship with United Utilities (UU).

Commercial Director John O’Connor said: “Once again, the confidence that UU have in the LiMA delivery team is as much a part of these awards as the hard work of the work winning team, so we can all take pride in this significant milestone.”

MAKING SURE NORTH WEST OF ENGLAND WATER WORKS

At the end of last year LiMA signed an order from UU for the biggest of those projects, Blackburn Batch, a contract which will take Darwen WwTW out of service, provide storm storage and divert flows to Blackburn WwTW. It also includes the build of a new works at Blackburn, with a total order value in the order of £100m. The work is due to start immediately and complete in March 2021.

The LIMA team will be providing new ‘Nereda’ technology at the Blackburn plant and at Failsworth in the MQP which will build on their recent experience at Kendal. Nereda is a new treatment technology designed to minimise plant footprints and reduce running costs, whilst meeting ever more stringent effluent quality requirements.

The MQP Batch focuses on improving river water quality and involves five different locations in the catchment area which extend out several miles. All of the MQP locations involve work related to "storm water storage" as well as the new Failsworth plant.

Business Unit Leader; Infrastructure UK Viv Jones adds: “We feel this is a really positive development in the relationship with our client at United Utilities, as our focus on delivering against tight timescales, helps them fully support the challenging regulatory demands they have to continually meet as an organisation.”

LIMA FRAMEWORK

LIMA is a Laing O’Rourke trading brand, set up to provide support and to deliver projects for UU as part of their five year capital investment programme, with a view to continuing that relationship beyond 2020 when the programme is renewed.

In addition to Blackburn Batch and MQP Batch the team has also been awarded the Water Framework Directive (WFD) project, which Framework Director Phil Appleby describes as: "a number of projects in upland moor areas to enhance the environmental amenity of water courses as fish breeding habitats, and to install flow measurement instruments for UU."

Finally, the Nantwich WwTW and CreweWwTW projects will look at getting existing wastewater infrastructure to perform better, with a particular focus on how the final effluent is discharged, due to tighter laws on the level of chemicals that can be discharged in outflows to rivers.   Framework Director Phil Appleby shared his thoughts on the immediate future for LIMA. “It’s been a fantastic start back to 2018, so I have to give full credit to the great team we have here, my thanks goes to everyone who’s played their part, large or small in securing this work, including everyone already engaged on existing projects. We’re going to keep listening to the client and give continued assurance and confidence to UU that LiMA can meet their expectations. Everyone is really looking forward to the challenge and many opportunities in the months ahead.”