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Home > Awards > Reading Sewage Treatment Plant
Target Alliance
(Thames Water, Black & Veatch and Taylor
Woodrow Construction):
Reading Sewage Treatment Plant |
79.5% |
Design and construction of the new Reading sewage
treatment works is being undertaken by an Alliance consisting
of the client Thames Water Utilities Limited, Taylor
Woodrow and Black & Veatch. The main drivers for
the £80m project are to meet new regulated standards
for effluent discharge and sludge disposal in addition
to eliminating odour nuisance.
The foundations for the project's CEEQUAL success lay
in Thames Water's determination to set very high standards
of environmental performance as one of the initial project
objectives - a fact illustrated by the contractual emphasis
on environmental management and the presence in the
project team of a dedicated Environmental Manager. A
thorough Environmental Impact Assessment, completed
prior to commencement, contained extensive mitigation
measures for the construction phase and enhancement
proposals as part of the scheme design - important environmental
aspects of civil engineering which are highlighted by
the CEEQUAL process. Examples of the former are the
air quality and landscape strategies agreed with Reading
Borough Council whilst enhancements include creation
of mounding as invertebrate sub-strate and the planting
of over 20,000 native trees.
The Alliance made an early decision to operate an Environmental
Management System (EMS) with the aim of gaining certification
to ISO14001. Having achieved certification it is no
surprise that the 'Project Environmental Management'
section of CEEQUAL was one of the project's highest
scoring elements.
Although a somewhat detailed design was required for
Planning purposes, thus constraining total design freedom,
the scheduling and tracking of decisions on all environmental
design matters once on site ensured that nothing 'slipped
through the net' in the course of making the many decisions
that a project of this complexity requires. The 'Environmental
Design Checklist' is reviewed every two months and all
decisions and changes signed off once implications and
agreements are reached. This process, and the results
from it, is a further contributory factor to the high
scoring in the CEEQUAL assessment.
From the early days of extensive site remediation,
when an unexpected colony of water voles was successfully
relocated under a licence from English Nature, to site
controls as part of the EMS, the project to date has
a very good environmental record.
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