Digitalising the water industry with intelligent systems With the water industry striving to digitise its operations across the board, leading Civil Engineering firm and framework suppliers, Mackenzie Construction, approached Scottish Water with a new and exciting innovation; a geomembrane leak detection system to improve and support smooth management and monitoring of their clean water tanks. Working with its subcontractors, the team developed a strategy and sought out the most appropriate technology, installing the protective membrane to a Scottish Water clean water tank as part of an ongoing structural repairs project. The first of its kind on Scottish Water tanks, the intelligent membrane is positioned over the tank to protect the treated water inside. Made up of layers of metallic fleece and impervious plasticised PVC, and encompassing a network of sensors wired to an automated fault-finding system, the membrane’s monitoring system is programmed to send an email alert as soon as any damage is detected, as well as sounding an audible buzzer at the control panel on-site. With this type of longstanding, reinforced concrete tanks, often damage can occur as a result of weather, corrosion, age or trespassing, and any ingress within the tank risks contaminants entering clean, treated water. Tank integrity is most often validated using flood testing; where a controlled amount of water is temporarily retained over a surface to determine the effectiveness of the waterproofing system. This is feasible when tanks are offline and empty, however, waiting for downtime to inspect tanks for damage can greatly increase risk to the asset and the network as a whole. With the solution provided by Mackenzie Construction and its subcontractors, the intelligent membrane provides constant feedback on the membrane’s integrity, even when tanks are live,
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to create a proactive, rather than reactive, approach to asset integrity. This type of reactive monitoring allows for localised repairs to be carried out rather than far more significant scopes of works which often involve the large-scale removal of overburden to identify and repair the issues. With a drive on reducing our carbon footprint and helping our clients achieve their net zero targets, the vast reduction in size and scope of repair works has significant advantages. Mark Brown, Contracts Manager at Mackenzie Construction said of the project, “At Mackenzie Construction, we are committed to continuous improvement, both as a business and in the service we offer to our clients. The priority of our client is to manage and maintain the quality of water being held within the structure. This treated water is supplied into homes, hospitals and businesses, so having this system in place gives the client confidence that there is no immediate risk to the asset and the water contained within. They are immediately made aware of any integrity issues before it becomes a problem and this allows de-risking of their vital assets. In a perfect world, every tank would have this kind of innovation to support tank monitoring and we’re delighted to be part of this step forward in the management of clean water assets for our clients.”
