Water industry printfrastructure (WIP)
Amount awarded: £1,543,610
Led by: United Utilities
Partners: ChangeMaker3D, Manchester Metropolitan University (PrintCity), Scottish Water
As technology for concrete and polymer printing has developed, so too have the opportunities for adoption within the water industry, particularly with regard to bespoke infrastructure designs. Our partnership takes experience from current working practices in the rail industry and learnings from academia, and converts these to actionable, operational demonstrations for the industry. With the ever increasing requirement to provide more detailed, unique and often resource intensive solutions, we believe we have a toolbox of options that will help the water industry and its customers plan and realise a more sustainable future for the implementation and maintenance of infrastructure assets.
“The water industry requires unprecedented levels of construction to deliver environmental improvements and maintain existing aging assets. We must address these challenges sustainably, efficiently and at lowest cost for our customers. Our WIP project will move 3D printing from good idea into a valuable tool for our business.” – Lisa Mansell, Chief Engineer (Innovation), United Utilities
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We are approaching the end of our Water Industry Printfrastructure (WIP) project. The last six months have seen our consortium successfully complete our final printing activities, including cold weather concrete printing. Since completion of these physical printing tasks the team have been concentrating on how we can best transfer knowledge to those wishing to adopt 3D concrete and plastics printing across the water industry. Over the next two months presentations and videos will be available on the Supply Chain Sustainability School for everyone to access with a username and password. We will also issue our technical and final reports via the Spring platform. The WIP project has received positive feedback from engaged individuals across multiple industries. Following our WIP day, at United Utilities Head Office on 10th June 2025, we received plaudits from not only water industry colleagues but also members of nuclear energy and rail focused collaborators. All presentations and the accompanying film of the event will be uploaded to the Spring platform in August 2025. In addition to this we are very proud to report that the project won “The Best Application of Technology” award at the Digital Construction Awards 2025 on 1st July 2025.
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For more information on Water Industry Printfrastructure, take a look at the following resources:
