Galliford Try and Siemens form water infrastructure partnership

Galliford Try and global engineering giant, Siemens, have formed a partnership in water industry infrastructure and digital technology.

The pairing will seek to enable UK water companies to “optimise new and existing infrastructure assets across their lifecycles with a focus on reducing pollution, operational costs, and achieving net zero.” They expect their partnership will “accelerate the integration of digital technologies across the lifecycle of water and wastewater projects.”

The companies have claimed their complementary expertise in the design, build and operation of water and wastewater assets “will help water companies solve a range of challenges, such as the ability to identify potential blockages in sewer networks, improve operational efficiency of treatment works and become a net zero industry by 2030.”

The partnership said it will will focus on three wastewater use cases: wastewater treatment; storm overflows and pollution incidents; and risk and maintenance in sewage pumping stations.

Wastewater treatment

Treatment process will be optimised by using mechanistic digital twin technology.

Storm overflows

Storm overflows and pollution incidents will be reduced through and “end-to-end solution, that uses artificial intelligence to find nine in ten blockages” and automates reporting of overflows in real-time.

This, the partners said will be coupled with a proven solution, already operational globally, for catchment level integrated control that reduces overflow volumes from existing infrastructure by 80% in light rain and 19% in heavy rain.

Sewage pumping stations

The partnership said t it will deploy a retrofit solution for pumping stations that reduces pump blockages by 80% and improves pump performance and risk.

Managing director of Galliford Try’s Environment business, Stephen Slessor, said: the partnership will save water companies the “legwork” and time currently needed bringing suppliers together to get value from digital tools.

Head of internet of things applications at Siemens, Adam Cartwright, said: “Deploying new technologies at pace has risk. Galliford Try has a track record of delivering projects and Siemens brings global technical expertise in water and wastewater. It is the fusion of these two worlds that simplifies and de-risks the deployment of new digital technologies.”