CONTRACTS AWARDED FOR FIRST UK RESERVOIR IN 40 YEARS

The first major new reservoir in the UK for about 40 years will be built by Van Oord subsidiary Mackley and its new JV partner Jones Bros Civil Engineering after a £150 million (€170 million) contract was awarded by the utility Portsmouth Water

The new joint venture has been named ’Future Water MJJV’, and the contract was awarded following a detailed tender process which includes the construction of a £41 million (€46.4 million) tunnelled pipeline to be installed by Ireland-based international building firm Ward & Burke Construction.

The 160-hectare Havant Thicket Reservoir should hold about 8.7 billion litres of water, with a daily supply capacity of 21 million litres, says Portsmouth Water, which is working on the project with neighbouring utility Southeast Water.

The reservoir will be supplied with surplus water from nearby springs when they flow at their highest in the winter months, it says.

“Future Water is delighted to have been selected by Portsmouth Water to deliver this critical piece of water infrastructure for the South East of England,” said Mackley MD Ben Hamer, who is now director of the joint venture. “As a regional company, legacy projects, such as this, are central to the values of our staff and stakeholders.”

“As well as providing vital water resources, we are tapping into the site’s potential to offer a host of wider benefits to the environment and our communities – recreation, education, health, well-being, local employment and training,” said Portsmouth Water CEO Bob Taylor. “Overall, building the reservoir would bring more benefits for nature, wildlife and local people than the existing grassland. We plan to create a new wetland to support threatened species of local and migrating birds, as well as new woodlands, hedgerows and wild flower banks, and to improve existing woodlands.”

The reservoir is scheduled to be operational by 2029.

ABP sets out plans for five port projects

The Port of Lowestoft, in the southern North Sea, is one of several Associated British Ports undergoing transformation.

Marine civil engineers McLaughlin & Harvey have been awarded the contract to design what it describes as an ambitious energy facility at Lowestoft Port, in which operations and maintenance acitivies and construction support for the offshore energy industry will be accommodated, ’helping to transform the town of Lowestoft into East of England’s premier offshore energy hub’.

Associated British Ports owns the port and has hired civil engineering firm Mace to support the development of its outer harbour, where three more service operation vessel berths and six crew transfer berths will be built. Known as ‘LEEF’ (Lowestoft Eastern Energy Facility), the project is expected to be completed within 12 months and is part of a ‘Port Gateway’ development.

Mace says it has secured a raft of deals with ABP for schemes at the ports of Immingham, Southampton, Newport and Plymouth.

At Immingham it will provide consultancy for a new Ro-Ro facility and two new harbour berths; at Southampton it will supervise the expansion of an existing container-to-rail facility; and in Plymouth, a new passenger boarding bridge system is being installed along with other refurbishments.

“As the UK’s leading port owner and operator with 21 ports around Britain, the Group Professional Services Framework was procured to strengthen ABP’s ability to deliver our core business as well as our strategic plan,” said Sahir Rahim, Group head of Contracts and Cost Management with ABP. “This drives our mission to support our customers in ‘Keeping Britain Trading’. “Building long-term collaborative relationships with our consultants through the Group Professional Services Framework is vital to support ABP’s core teams across a portfolio of varied project development and delivery opportunities. This framework is critical to enable us to achieve our strategic growth objectives whilst improving ABP’s project management and technical capability, focusing on safety in everything we do, being considerate to the environment and sensitive in our development within our regions.”

Marine Civils

International energy firm Iberdrola has announced it will build its first floating photovoltaic plant, in Alsace, France.

The contract for the 25MW plant was awarded to Iberdrola following a tender process launched by the municipality of Kurtzenhouse in Alsace, for a floating solar panel farm to be installed on the Bischwiller gravel pit.

The gravel pit is operated by Eqiom Granulats, which extracts alluvial sand and gravel, and these operations will continue while the solar plant is being installed, Iberdrola says.

The plant will occupy an area of approximately 13.5 hectares of the 28 hectares available on the site, and is estimated to be able to produce 27GWh of electricity a year, which would power almost 10,000 households, Iberdrola claims, and will be installed and operating by the end of 2026.

The company says it intends to specialise in developing floating solar on active industrial sites

”This project strengthens Iberdrola France’s position in the Grand Est region where the company is already developing a solar photovoltaic (PV) plant for Solvay to supply its