Barhale in £22m Thames Water tunnels and aqueducts win

11 September 2020


UK-based civil and infrastructure services provider Barhale has secured a key Thames Water AMP7 contract. The four-year, £22m (US$28m) programme involves inspections and works on the Thames Water Ring Main (TWRM) and raw water tunnels.

Barhale will monitor and maintain a total of 35km of ring-main tunnels and a further 9km of raw-water tunnels. Associated works include the relining of a 1.8km length of the 2.5m-diameter inlet and outlet tunnels for the QEII Reservoir at Walton-on-Thames, Surrey.

The TWRM is an 80km, 2.5m-diameter tunnel built between 1988 and 1994 to convey water from five treatment works and transfer flows via pumping stations housed in shafts along the route. It is a major part of London’s water supply infrastructure and conveys an average daily flow of around a sixth of London’s daily demand.

Barhale Southern Region Director Phil Cull, said: “The TWRM and the raw-water tunnels are absolutely critical pieces of infrastructure for London and the scale of the task cannot be underestimated. To put it in perspective, one element of the programme of works will be the replacement of all of the grout-hole caps along 27km of tunnel – a total of 217,000 at around eight per metre.”

Barhale is one of the UK’s largest civil engineering and infrastructure providers and was established in 1980 as a specialist tunnelling contractor. While still active in tunnelling, it has also expanded into other areas such as water, energy, transport and the built environment.