A team effort to ensure our customers have a safe reliable water supply every day
22 December 2021
As an essential service provider, we need to ensure we keep our network in a good condition to provide our customers with reliable safe drinking water.
Recently, our teams had the challenge of carrying out one of the most complex repairs to a clean water pipe in Cefn Mably, near Cardiff. The pipe provides water to over 150,000 homes and businesses in Cardiff so is an essential source of water for this area.
A specialised team was formed to do the repair, made up of colleagues from our Capital Alliance contract partners, Operations Team and supply chain. These teams who include Lewis Civil Engineering, HVL solutions Ltd, and UTS Engineering Ltd are experienced in repairing difficult and complex leaks on our live water networks and worked extremely hard over many weeks to make sure the water pipe was effectively and efficiently repaired.
Due to the location of the repair, a road closure was in place for a 24 hour period and five businesses who reside at Cefn Mably Park had to close for the day. Both the estates and communications team were heavily involved in providing regular updates to businesses and the residents of Cefn Mably Park.
Ian Christie, Manager Director of Water, Asset Planning & Capital Delivery, said: “This has been the most complex repair we have had to deal with on a main pipeline which supplies households across Cardiff. It was great to see the fantastic effort our teams have put on to this essential repair, the level of planning, innovation and engineering aptitude from our Capital team and supply chain with great support from our Operational teams. With over 80 people involved across our company, and great support from South Wales Trunk Road Agency who had to manage traffic around the working area; the repair was completed successfully and safely’’
Aled Morgan, Programme Manager, said: “We faced many challenges with this complex repair given there are so many existing mains cross that site along with limited historic drawings of the network. With the Capital Alliance and Distribution team working together, we were able to strategically work through various non-intrusive site investigations to increase our intelligence of the network and give us the confidence that we could carry out the repair successfully.”