Growing scarcity in inspectors poses threat to assurance of reservoir safety

Falling numbers of reservoir inspectors in the face of escalating demand for their services threatens to undermine confidence in the safety of UK reservoirs according to a recent expert review.

According to the review author, the Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE), it has confirmed the findings in the 2021 Independent Reservoir Safety Review led by Professor David Balmforth that followed a life-threatening incident in 2019 at Toddbrook reservoir in the Peak District. The ICE quoted the concern voiced in the Balmforth review that: “the current trend is likely to result in the assurance of reservoir safety becoming unsustainable in the long term”.

The ICE said the purpose of its review included the development of proposals “to secure the long-term supply of suitability qualified and experienced engineers to join official reservoir safety engineer panels, enabling them to carry out construction engineer, inspecting engineer and supervising engineer roles in the UK.” It looked also to grow the numbers of reservoir safety panel engineers over the next five years and to retain existing panel engineers.

The ICE identified “stagnating” numbers of panel engineers as demand rises. And in his foreword, chair of the ICE review, Professor Lord Robert Mair described the availability of panel engineers as “highly variable”.

In his foreword to the ICE review Mair said: “The government’s commitment to implement the findings of Professor Balmforth’s review in full will bring many more reservoirs into the regulatory system and, in the case of the highest-risk assets, increase the volume of work that panel engineers must deliver per reservoir.

"Demand for panel engineers is also being driven up by the need to respond to accelerating climate change and manage an ageing asset base; we may also be on the cusp of a large programme of new reservoir construction.”

The ICE has offered six recommendations to address the shortfall in civil engineering experts who take up roles on reservoir engineer panels that include safety inspection.

The recommendations include proposals for:

• measures whereby regulators might get more out of the existing community of panel engineers;

• moves by the government and regulator’s Reservoirs Committee to identify candidates to address the short term need for growth the number of panel engineers;

• improvement to the commercial arrangements to remove financial barriers faced by small reservoir owners seeking access to panel engineer services; and

• promotion of panel engineering more widely to take in engineers from adjacent disciplines such as structural engineering.

The recommendations were:

• unlock capacity in the existing panel engineer community;

• grow ARPE numbers in the short to medium term;

• reform the Panel structure to align it to any new risk/hazard classification for UK reservoirs and create a stepping stone between the supervising engineers Panel and All Reservoirs Panel;

• deliver a step change in the Learning and Development support available to panel engineers;

• improve the commercial environment in which panel engineer services are delivered; and

• promote panel engineer careers to a wide and diverse range of audiences.