WESSEX Water's £50million drinking water project near Bridgwater is progressing well - despite the challenges of the pandemic.

Work started on the Durleigh Water Treatment Centre scheme in 2019.

Drawing from Durleigh Reservoir to the west, the old centre needed extensive reconstruction to ensure it continues to deliver the highest quality drinking water to a population of 44,500.

It is the largest single-value scheme delivered by Wessex Water’s Engineering and Sustainable Delivery (ESD) department.

Upgraded treatment processes will ensure Durleigh helps to meet the company’s long-term strategy for Somerset, with water due to be put back into supply from the site next year.

Bridgwater Mercury:

Project manager Nigel Coates said: “We’re progressing on programme and within budget, despite some unique challenges posed by Covid-19.

“We closed the site for a week at the start of the pandemic, conducted a project and site assessment with new rules drawn on social distancing and reduced the maximum number of people able to attend site safely.

“This could easily have caused major delays to such a complex and large-scale project, so everyone in our ESD team and all our partners deserves enormous credit for ensuring that hasn’t happened.”

Much of the old centre has been demolished and outdated equipment decommissioned, but Wessex Water has been able to repurpose or recycle around 30 per cent of structures to ensure value for money.

The Durleigh project uses Building Information Modelling (BIM), with AECOM appointed to deliver the digital design using the Autodesk suite of products and Bentley’s ProjectWise software for the common data environment.