Project South Shore, Northern Ireland Water – UK

Battus experts provided technical, operational and commercial expertise in an RPS Consulting-led team delivering technical due diligence on a major wastewater treatment plant in Northern Ireland.

The upgrade of this wastewater treatment plant to treat 180,000 PE was designed, financed and built by a private consortium under a 25 year contract from NI Water, and is currently operated by one of the original consortium members. The contract is coming towards its end and has provisions around plant handback. In summary these are that NI Water can expect the plant to continue to produce the same level of service for a period of 5 years after contract end with no additional capital expenditure in that period. The high level objective was thus to understand the current extent and cost of these liabilities to factor into any contract closure arrangements.

To reach this value, the two contract parties agreed to follow the process outlined in the contract of developing an Asset Condition Report (ACR) and Renewal Notice (RN). To that end, NI Water asked RPS, supported by Battus Associates, to deliver the two outputs (ACR and RN) compiled into a Technical Due Diligence Report (TDD Report).

The detailed activities included

an initial inspection of the plant and as-built drawings
review of the plant maintenance records and activities
asset categorisation and assessment
comparison with industry and NIW-standard asset management and replacement regimes
compilation of a costed replacement programme (if required) by plant process block

A risk-based approach was applied to this Asset Condition Report to develop upper and lower bound cost estimates for a renewal programme (the Renewal Notice).

During this TDD task, a number of constraints, assumptions, issues and risks were also identified across the plant that enable current performance and affect resilience. A number of areas were also noted where further investigation would provide greater certainty on both the ACR and RN, and these were included in the final TDD Report. The task was completed with the full co-operation of the plant operator and the final report shared with them.