Amount awarded: £173,880
Led by: Yorkshire Water
Partners: Affinity Water, Thames Water Utilities, Northumbrian Water, Scottish Water, Cymru Welsh Water, SES Water
Project Completed: September 2023
The UK has over 300,000 km of clean water distribution pipes. These do not have an infinite lifespan, and the cost to replace just 1% of the network each year is estimated to be at least £600million. In reality, much more than 1% of the network reaches the end of its asset lifespan each year, resulting in leakage; customer disruption; interruptions to supply; and water quality issues. Lining presents an attractive solution to address this challenge with a reduced cost, impact on customers and carbon footprint. However, there is a gap between what is currently at-market and what is required to meet the challenges within a 21st century water network.
The number of at-market lining solutions available in the UK has dwindled in recent years, due to the regulatory challenges associated with gaining approval for potable water solutions within the UK. In addition, suppliers have been reluctant to guarantee lining materials for a meaningful length of time (50 years+), making their solutions unattractive. The UK lining market has therefore become stagnant, and urgently needs investment and push from water companies to reinvigorate it.
For suppliers, the investment required is so great and the scale of the market so uncertain, that this can only be achieved via external funding and with widespread water company collaboration.
The project used a unique combination of approaches, and was novel in creating a shared set of requirements across a number of water companies. This process would not have been initiated as ‘business as usual,’ as the full-scale solution development required to bring a product to market would be prohibitively expensive for one water company – or even a group of companies. In addition, consensus on the requirements for a new lining solution is sensible if a single, cost-effective solution is to be developed, meaning that this collaborative approach was vital.
This Phase 1 project sought to address this challenge by building the specification for a lining solution (including lifespan), and ultimately bring it close to market in a follow-on project (Designer Liner Phase 2).
The partnership for Phase 1 was led by Yorkshire water and included RPS, Isle UK, Affinity, Northumbrian Water, Thames Water, Welsh Water and SES Water. In addition a panel of technical experts was assembled to guide and inform the project team.
While the business case for a new lining solution is fairly clear from the water company viewpoint, informal discussions between regulators, lining suppliers and UK water companies had revealed limited understanding of lining needs, aspirations, and challenges. These discussions formed the foundation of this project, with the aim to spend time considering lining requirements and establishing a level of agreement in the sector. The intention of Phase 1 was to deliver the four outcomes below.
The intended outcomes were:
The key risks on this project fell broadly into three areas. The need to engage with suppliers and search for solutions from the UK and worldwide; the need for a solution that works within the UK regulatory framework; and the aspirational targets that would need to be met for a lining solution to ‘rock the boat’ and drive a change in rehabilitation techniques. These risks were well managed during Phase 1 by the project design and methodology, although they were not mitigated away and continued to be present in the development of Phase 2.
The main outputs from this project were a report ‘Designer Liner Phase 1 Project Report’, dated 28 February 2023, and a bid for Designer Liner Phase 2 into the Transform stream of the next Water Breakthrough Challenge.
Communications on this relatively short Catalyst project were largely shared within the project team and partners of this project, and of the planned Phase 2 project. This was due to the nature of the outputs being primarily related to the development of a Transform bid which was subsequently successful. A case study outlining the project plan was shared via Ofwat’s Innovation Fund web pages in July 2022, followed by an update briefing in November 2022. A presentation was given on Designer Liner at the Leakage Conference in December 2022.
This project achieved a consensus across seven UK water companies in terms of requirements for a new lining solution, no mean feat in a sector that is carrying out very little lining and experience is dwindling. The scale of collaboration clearly showed that the market for a new lining solution is significant and gave confidence that progressing to Phase 2 was the right direction and enabled the attraction of world-leading partners in the field of materials development to take a step into the water sector.
The second phase of the project is being supported by further funding from the Water Breakthrough Challenge 3: Transform Stream; read more about Designer Liner 2 here.
For more information on Designer Liner, take a look at the following resources:
