Our award-winning project which saw a sunken drinking water storage tank brought back to life was selected to be one of the first sites visited by the new Minister for Water and Rural Growth, Robbie Moore MP, after his appointment in November 2023.
Our site at Aylesford, which won the prestigious Infrastructure Delivery category at the Utility Week Awards, was restored after the appearance of large sinkholes in September 2020.
This triggered a chain of events and engineering challenges the company had never experienced before, and may never be again, the MP was told.
In the weeks and months that followed the sinkholes’ appearance, several specialist surveys were undertaken, including external and internal drone surveys, CCTV, geophysical, laser scanning ground level monitoring and dynamic probing, with 250 ground investigation holes undertaken to build a detailed 3D model and develop complex repairs.
Working with DDS Contracting and AtkinsRéalis, we were able to bring the site back into operation, filling the voids with foam concrete and resin and achieving the target of having one of the tanks supplying customers again from March 2021.
To maintain Maidstone and the surrounding area’s supplies while repairs were made, a new temporary water treatment works was built nearby in a matter of months to boost supplies, years ahead of the planned permanent works at the same site.
Mr Moore MP was also taken to see this temporary site along with its £39 million permanent replacement The Butler Water Treatment Works which is in the process of being built.
The Butler site is the first new water treatment works, in partnership with Murphy, to be built in Kent for 18 years and will supply up to 20 million litres of water a day to the local area.
Leading the tour was our CEO, David Hinton, who said:
“As this was an extremely challenging project for us, we were proud to show the Minister just how we managed to restore the site with no disruption to customers and increasing resilience in such a short time frame.
“We were also able to visit the nearby construction site of our brand-new water treatment works near Maidstone and talk about our ambitious improvement plans for our supply area.”
