I have worked in water all my career, and I have witnessed the ever-increasing pressures the sector is facing. With the demand for water increasing, the escalating pace of climate change increasing the risk of droughts and flooding, and the loss of biodiversity impacting water quality, we need to find new, nature-positive solutions to evolve the industry as a whole.

Lindsey Russell, UK Water Director

At Sweco, our water consultants combine Nature-based Solutions, systems thinking, digital innovation and a creative approach to sustainability with a long-standing reputation for class-leading design and technical engineering excellence.

We understand that water is not just a resource – it is the foundation of thriving communities and ecosystems. Our approach to design, engineering and operational technology integrates end-to-end grey infrastructure capability with innovative technologies and sustainable green-blue practices to transform critical networks.

Our team of teams – bringing together experts in water resources, groundwater, SuDS, flood resilience, river engineering, Nature-based Solutions and asset management – is working at the heart of the transition to a more resilient and sustainable water network. We support clients across regulated and non-regulated water sectors, both within AMP8 and for ongoing non-framework projects.

What truly sets us apart is how we work – as trusted partners, not just service providers – building long-term relationships and delivering with consistency, care and accountability.

Water and the Green Transition

We believe that effective water management is vital in achieving climate resilience and environmental conservation. Increasing the use of nature-based solutions will preserve ecosystems and provide natural defence against climate impacts to protect our water bodies and maintain or improve biodiversity and ecological balance. Additionally, incorporating green/blue infrastructure in urban planning helps manage stormwater, mitigate flooding, and improve water quality.

As a fundamental part of the Green Transition, water plays a vital role in various sectors that are essential for sustainability and environmental health. Here are several key points highlighting its importance:

Public Health: Access to clean water is vital for public health. Prioritizing water quality and sanitation is essential for preventing waterborne diseases and ensuring community wellbeing, particularly in vulnerable populations.

Ecosystem Health: Healthy water systems support biodiversity and ecosystems. Protecting watersheds and wetlands is essential for maintaining ecological balance, which in turn contributes to carbon sequestration and climate resilience.

Urban Development: As cities grow and urbanization increases, managing water resources becomes critical for creating sustainable, liveable communities. Integrating green infrastructure, such as rain gardens and permeable pavements, can enhance urban water management while improving resilience to extreme weather events.

Industrial Processes: Many industries rely on water for their operations. Transitioning to sustainable practices and technologies can reduce water consumption and pollution, thereby supporting environmental goals.

Agriculture: Sustainable agricultural practices depend on adequate water supply for irrigation. Efficient water use in farming helps reduce waste, enhances food security, and minimises the environmental impact of agricultural runoff.

Energy Production: Water is crucial for generating renewable energy, such as hydropower, and is also needed for cooling in thermal power plants. Transitioning to cleaner energy sources often requires efficient water management to avoid over-extraction and pollution.

Across Sweco’s multi-disciplinary team of teams, our experts are perfectly placed to support the evolution to ‘new world’ of water site and infrastructure design as we combine ecology, landscape architecture, environmental services and wider sustainability consultancy with proven technical excellence in engineering and operational asset management.

We have a very open-minded view when it comes to interrogating the way we do things, and we wanted a partner with an equally brave approach when it comes to exploring different methods of engineering and asset management.

Richard Woodhouse, Sustainable Drainage Manager at Northumbrian Water

Pathfinder projects

The Anglian Water @one alliance commissioned this Nature-based Solutions pathfinder from their consultant team to aid their understanding as to how they and the internal Anglian Water teams should better integrate and transform ready for NbS delivery. The pathfinder selected the River Gipping catchment, located in East Anglia for the case study given the number of potential interventions planned across AMP8, which aided comparisons between the traditional engineered solutions and NbS.

Digital carbon cost management

Sweco has a detailed understanding of the relationship between carbon and cost. While efficient design can reduce both carbon and cost to a certain point, alternative low carbon materials often cost more than traditional fossil-fuel based options. Sweco strive to help our clients navigate this ‘carbon cost tipping point’ and select the most efficient and cost-effective reduction options.

To support the move from carbon accounting to carbon cost management, Sweco’s Swedish Urban Development Team have developed innovative  parametric design tools. These enable our teams to automatically optimise structures from a carbon and cost perspective through machine learning.

The team have also created digital tools that allow for carbon to be represented via a colour spectrum within BIM models. This facilitates the rapid identification of carbon hotspots and enables teams to focus on priority areas.

Nature-based solutions

Nature-based solutions are at the heart of Sweco’s vision to plan and design the sustainable communities and cities of the future. We prioritise nature-based solutions, for which we have significant experience of delivering blue-green solutions in both urban and rural environments and bring innovation from the Nordics to the UK.

In the UK, Sweco helped deliver a net zero carbon project at Marston WRC. The team discounted traditional solutions, instead refurbishing grass plots to accommodate the increase in treatment capacity. Benefits included:

• 90% capital carbon reduction versus initial traditional solution
• Net Zero Carbon – trees plated to offset residual carbon
• Biodiversity net gain with site supporting an abundance of wildlife
• 43% cost saving against the notional solution

Digital Twins

Sweco’s explanation of a Digital Twin is “a representation of a thing, a process, a system or series of connected things and systems to form a system of systems. The key to what distinguishes a digital twin from any other model is its connection to its physical twin”.

In water supply, a digital twin can represent a single pump, a pump set, pumping station, treatment works, a system of supply and distribution pipes, valves, flow meters etc. It can also be an entire network linking all attributes above. Sweco designed and configured Irish Water’s National Telemetry System that is aligned with other Enterprise Systems to achieve an enterprise level Digital Twin of the entire Irish Water Network. The target outcomes are:

• Operational Efficiencies: Reduction in frequency and duration of site visits.
  Saving €32M
• Maintenance Optimisation: Condition based maintenance. RPA on trigger values/events.
  Saving €20M
• Investment Planning: Inform the capital investment plan with condition and performance data to enable evidence-based targeting of investment.
  Saving €17.4M
• Leakage Reduction: Reduced leakage and avoidance of capital investment in treatment capacity.
  Saving €3.3M
• Compliance Reporting: Lean data collection and reporting.
  Saving €10.6M

System resilience

Sweco is challenging Yorkshire Water’s traditional thinking to define a new operating system for the Hull water supply network that is sustainable, focused on customers, offers service resilience and calm network operation. The system is pressure controlled to meet normal diurnal patterns of demand as well as highly variable production needs for large process plants and food suppliers. Key considerations are continuation of control in the event of loss of communication between node points and resilience in the event of cyberattack.

Sweco applied a systems resilience model tested and proven in the aviation sector to great effect. The new operating system will maximise the life span of the network, lead to fewer leaks, fewer operational and maintenance callouts, reduce energy demand and chemical consumption, provide better water quality, and satisfy customer demands.

Sweco worked with Yorkshire Water staff to evaluate what could go wrong, the probability of such, how failures would impact the business, domestic and commercial customers, and the cost impacts to determine the best approach to achieve a calm system that will be selfhealing in real time using fallback edge controls, backed up by regional diagnostic and central oversight to assure supply and demand balance.

Target Outcomes: Reduce failures with customer or moderate business impact to 1 in 11yrs (currently 8 p.a.)

Harnessing asset information

Sweco guided Dublin Airport Authority on their Asset Management journey, which included development of their Asset Information Management Strategy.

The Leadership at the airport realised that asset data is fundamental to the quality of information, which in turn is crucial to good asset decision making in everything from customer satisfaction data, systems health and financials to BIM, GIS, real time status and social media.

Outcomes:

• Asset Care operating budget reduced by 18% – from €35M to €28.8M pa over 5 years
• Enabled passenger numbers increase – 18.7M to 31.5M PAX without significant new infrastructure
• Passengers per Asset Care FTE increase from 116,254 to 123,767 in 3 years = 6% efficiency
• Main Runway outages during operating hours reduced from 6 events pa average to 0
• Asset replacement value €4B

Remote asset management

The Sweco team used their operational experience apply the “in the whole” thinking, combining real life experience and industry best practice to deliver benefits that are both significant and sustainable.

Anglian Water undertook a project to apply Sweco’s Remote Asset Management method to the 4300 wastewater pumping station portfolio. The application of our “in the whole”, risk-based methodology led to a significant improvement in efficiency in the field and control centre.

• Reducing unwanted alarms by 30%
• Reducing interruptions and overtime
• Making the control room a better place to work

These benefits were immediate with an increase in staff availability equivalent to 15 FTE or £1.2m p.a. There was no reduction in pumping station compliance or increase in service failures

Process technologies

Sweco has worked with Innsbruck University to develop process technologies that successfully reduce operational costs and provide lower carbon footprint solutions for our clients We currently hold the European License for the following Technologies:

• SHARON®
• DEMON®
• EssDE®
• InDENSE®
• BIOCOS®
• Triple A Technology®
• DEMON®, that has successfully been delivered in UK at Knostrop, Basingstoke and Poole, uses 60% less energy than conventional biological treatment systems and does not require an external carbon source.
• BIOCOS®, a proven technology with over 100 systems in full scale operation worldwide, offers a 20% reduction in both CAPEX and OPEX when compared to optimised Sequencing Batch Reactor processes like NEREDA

Process safety

Sweco’s Process Safety Experts are trained to facilitate the IChemE’s 7-stage Hazard Study Process and, where required, undertake LOPA Studies and ALARP Assessments. This to confirm that the project design has the sufficient layers of protection required to meet the agreed Tolerable Risk Target.

Sweco further supports clients in developing bespoke design processes to ensure compliance with all Statutory Regulations including design COSHH Assessments, DSEAR/HAC Assessments and Explosion Studies.

We worked in collaboration with Yorkshire Water in AMP6 to develop a Process Safety procedure and continue to work closely with their Principal Engineers to support and promote the AMP7 Process Safety requirements, developing and improving the systems and techniques in line with industry best practice.

Reliability & maintenance

Sweco has supported Dublin Airport in the development of Lean Maintenance practices with a Systems Engineering approach. The approach, born from NASA, being used extensively in the Aviation sector.

The approach requires strong vision, leadership, and time to achieve the cultural transformation in moving from reactive to proactive responses. Proactive maintenance being on average four times more cost-effective than reactive with asset reliability and customer service performance improving significantly.

Sweco works with clients to develop processes that result in business outcomes driving the use of Computerised Maintenance Systems. This results in System Engineers owning Asset Health and Systems Performance, Maintenance Planners having plans for almost all eventualities and Maintenance Schedulers assigning the right people to undertake work at the right time.

Outcomes:

• Improved customer service performance – best performing airport worldwide ACI rating
• Asset performance, costs & risks quantified and controlled
• Maintenance plans aligned with investment plan
• 15% asset cost saving – note this is not the cost of maintenance, it is cost of ownership

Virtual rooms

Sweco worked with Barry and WSP to develop a virtual consultation room for the N/M20 Cork to Limerick Road. The virtual consultation, that included interactive boards, 3D route maps and a booking facility for 1-2-1 consultation, was a huge success with 39,000 people visiting the site and 2,500 follow up communications. Sweco is currently working with Anglian Water to develop a virtual consultation room for use on the S101A and flooding programmes.

Zero drawings design

Zero drawings is a new way of developing/presenting model views bespoke to the user’s requirements. The process provides the following benefits:

• Reduces the number of drawings on projects by 90%
• Reduces site queries by 50%
• Speeds up design revisions
• Provides one version of the truth

Developed by Sweco transportation teams in Denmark and Norway, the use of zero drawings on the Randselva Bridge (Norway) won the World’s Best BIM Project at the 2020 Tekla Global BIM Awards.

The Zero Drawings initiative, successfully utilised at Whittlingham Water Recycling Centre, a £23m wastewater project delivered for Anglian Water, speeds up design revisions, reduces the number of drawings being produced from 3D models and minimises site-based queries. The approach has been shown to reduce project time by up to 15%.