IN Brief:
- AtkinsRéalis will support major water-resource and resilience projects.
- Its role covers feasibility, business cases, design, construction, and commissioning.
- Projects include the Kielder transfer, Chellow 2, and mine-water treatment studies.
AtkinsRéalis has been appointed to a Yorkshire Water AMP8 framework supporting strategic water-resource, resilience, and infrastructure projects across the utility’s five-year investment programme.
Services will extend from early feasibility through to project delivery, including surveys, modelling, business-case development, construction-ready design, and support during construction and commissioning.
The framework encompasses projects intended to improve long-term water security, drought resilience, water quality, and environmental performance, with several schemes examining how resources could be transferred or recovered across existing regional boundaries.
Among the largest is the Kielder Transfer Strategic Resource Option, which is assessing whether water stored in Kielder reservoir could support areas served by Yorkshire Water and United Utilities. Kielder Water holds approximately 200 billion litres and is Northern Europe’s largest artificial lake.
Rather than relying solely on local sources during drought, the proposed transfer forms part of a wider movement towards a more connected national water system in which supplies can move between regions during periods of exceptional demand.
Further projects include Bradford Water Supply Resilience, known as Chellow 2, which is being used as a pathfinder for developing and delivering major infrastructure schemes. The South Yorkshire Sources programme is examining replacement resources for supplies currently drawn from the Upper Derwent Valley.
In Nottinghamshire, the framework will also support an assessment of whether water from former mines could be treated for public supply while reducing contamination risks associated with historic workings.
Richard Whale, market director for water at AtkinsRéalis, said: “From improving water quality to strengthening resilience to drought, the work ahead is both complex and essential. We’ll be supporting the full journey, from early decisions through to delivery, bringing together the right skills and experience to keep projects moving.”
Maintaining engineering continuity from feasibility into commissioning can reduce the loss of knowledge that often occurs between project stages. Assumptions developed during demand modelling and option selection can be tested against later surveys, planning requirements, environmental assessments, buildability reviews, and operating constraints.
Strategic resource schemes generally require longer development periods than conventional asset replacements because their business cases depend on regional demand forecasts, environmental limits, land, planning, abstraction rules, regulatory approval, and coordination between several water companies.
The water sector has entered AMP8 with an investment programme substantially larger than the preceding five-year period. Utilities are expected to increase capacity and resilience while reducing storm-overflow use, leakage, pollution incidents, and operational carbon.
That programme is expanding demand for civil engineering, process design, mechanical and electrical systems, environmental services, digital asset information, commissioning, and specialist construction management. Many water companies are procuring frameworks simultaneously, drawing on much of the same professional and contracting capacity.
Delivery methods are already adapting to the scale of the workload. Severn Trent’s adoption of pipe-bursting technology for AMP8 renewals reflects the pressure to increase network output while limiting excavation, reinstatement, and disruption.
Yorkshire Water’s strategic resource options present a different engineering challenge. Transfers between company regions require pumping, treatment, storage, controls, long-distance pipelines, and potentially substantial power connections, while operating rules must define when supplies move and how environmental constraints are maintained.
Former mine water introduces additional uncertainty because its chemistry may vary between locations and over time. Treatment design must account for metals, suspended solids, historic contamination, pumping requirements, and the behaviour of interconnected underground workings.
If a technically and commercially viable treatment route can be established, mine water could move from environmental liability to strategic resource. Long-term operating responsibility, water quality assurance, energy use, and residual-waste management would still require detailed resolution.
Digital modelling will connect many of these decisions because the performance of one intervention may depend on conditions elsewhere in the network. Integrated models can test demand growth, drought scenarios, transfer constraints, treatment capacity, energy consumption, storage levels, and maintenance outages before major capital commitments are made.
Although detailed modelling can reduce uncertainty, it cannot eliminate the need for timely decisions. Prolonged option development can compress later construction programmes and leave contractors carrying risks that could have been resolved during design.
Yorkshire Water and its framework partners will therefore need to move schemes through feasibility and approval at sufficient pace while maintaining the technical evidence required for major investment. AtkinsRéalis’ involvement across the full development sequence is intended to preserve continuity as options progress towards construction.
