Andrew Jordaan is a South African civil engineer with extensive experience in various high-level projects. When the opportunity arose to practice these skills at the UK based Mott MacDonald, he grabbed the opportunity with both hands and hasn’t looked back since.

The Wing Water Treatment Works extension began in 2005 when Anglian Water indicated its plans to abstract more water from Rutland Water and extend the existing Water Treatment Works at the Wing for further water supply to the population. With the emergence of 90 000 additional homes, the project finally got off the ground.

Andrew explains: “Anglian Water had to extend its existing water treatment works at the Wing to provide drinking water to meet the increase in consumption. This meant that the new underground pipelines had to be laid from Rutland Water to the Wing extension and from the Wing to Kettering via Corby.”

Rutland Water was built as a reservoir in 1975 to store and provide water for treatment in the supply of domestic and commercial users. Prior to the commencement of the project, the existing pipelines and water treatment works were capable of taking up to 75% of the amount of water that Anglian Water was permitted by license. With the proposed extensions, Anglian Water will be able to extract up to the full licensed amount from Rutland Water.

Rutland Water’s wetland area is protected by law as a Special Protection Area. Due to this legal environmental protection, Anglian Water is obligated to ensure that future plans for water provision incorporate the protection of special wildlife of the reservoir.

The team of designers therefore created additional lagoons and wetlands as an alternative habitat for wildlife during periods of lowered reservoir levels. They also constructed additional dams in the existing reservoirs to maintain water levels in bays during lowered levels in the main reservoirs.

The legal environmental protection on the project placed considerable limitations on the design team. Fortunately these obstacles did not present any problems while working in Civil Designer. “The program automatically picked up the long sections off the DTM without any user intervention. We used the aerial pictures as a background and placed the contours and cadastral plans over it to plan and plot the routes. The pipelines were laid across agricultural land and involved crossings of railways, roads and rivers.”

“The software was therefore instrumental in helping us complete the preliminary designs, feasibility studies and DTM which extended into the final design for the tunnel crossings of the major roads and railways,” explains Andrew.

The construction of the Water Treatment Works and the laying of the pipelines will be completed in March 2010. It will supply an average of 50 million litres per day, rising to 90 million liters per day at peak times. In addition, work for the wetlands will be completed by November 2010.

According to Andrew the project which has been labeled as Anglian Water’s biggest project ever, will continue to remain a highlight in his working career.