Judging leakage control effort

Published On 24/05/2018

Assessing the Impact of a Burst Mains Renewal Programme on Leakage Control Effort

Assessing the Impact of a Burst Mains Renewal Programme on Leakage Control Effort is the latest project in UKWIR’s leakage programme. Programme Lead, Northumbrian Water's Dennis Dellow introduced the dissemination event that took place in Birmingham prior to the annual Water UK leakage conference.

Mike Butler, from the contractor, RPS, set out the aim of the project, managed by Jo Parker, which was ‘to identify the impact of burst-driven mains renewal work on the operational costs of leakage management in a DMA such that a totex asset management model can be derived which can show the optimal intervention in a DMA taking all costs into account’.

Questionnaires were sent out to companies and, in the event, data was analysed for 479 burst-driven schemes. The data covered on average of three years prior to mains renewal and up to five years of post-completion data on performance.

Key performance indicators

The project has quantified the impact of burst-driven mains renewal schemes on a number of operational performance indicators, and provided formulas to predict these impacts from District Meter Area (DMA) characteristics.

These performance indicators  were leakage, natural rate of rise of leakage, minimum achieved leakage, leak detection hours, mains repair frequency, customer supply pipe repair frequency, repairs on renewed sections of main and supply interruptions. 

RPS  then analysed the impact of burst-driven mains renewal work on the operational costs of leakage management in a number of DMAs across different water companies and derived an asset management model which can be used to identify the optimal intervention within and between DMAs while taking all costs into account.

A data protocol is recommended which will enable water companies to produce robust predictions of the impact of proposed work. The project also provided a predictive tool, which can be used for the development of robust network asset management plans.