Providing water services throughout the Severn Trent region
People in Severn Trent Services have begun using Waternet software – provided by RPS (a Tetra Tech company) – a leading provider of consulting and engineering services worldwide.
Waternet now replaces multiple legacy systems to capture, organise, and present critical water usage data from the thousands of assets that Severn Trent Services operates and maintains nationwide.
Severn Trent’s water specialist teams in Derby and Shelton customer contact centres recently celebrated a 25-year partnership with HomeServe.
Amongst them was Kate Lester, who’s managed the HomeServe contract on behalf of Severn Trent Services for over 12 years.
Kate said:
“I obviously wasn’t in this job 25 years ago! But I do remember the day we went live across the customer contact centres back in 2013. It was the first time Severn Trent started introducing HomeServe to customers when they rang about a billing or payment enquiry. Until then, direct marketing was used to mail customers about HomeServe's emergency assistance cover.”
World Mental Health Day is on 10 October every year, and this year, the theme is workplace mental health.
We spoke to Alastair Pentland, Environmental Operations Manager at Oren Environmental. Alastair is a mental health first aider, equipped to recognise the early signs of mental health issues in his colleagues and to support them.
A reed bed is a nature-based solution for treating water. It can be used in the final stage of the wastewater treatment process, ensuring water is ‘polished’ before being discharged into watercourses and the wider environment.
However, a reed bed system can often be neglected despite its essential role, leading to suboptimal performance and potentially harmful environmental consequences. But why does this happen?
We spoke to Ross Brown, Sales Manager at Oren Environmental, who explained why reed beds are often built and forgotten.
We understand the crucial role a well-maintained reed bed can play in water treatment. We also acknowledge that reed beds are valuable ecosystems that provide a habitat for various plant and animal species.
That’s why maintaining them requires a sustainable approach, too, to ensure their health and effectiveness while enhancing their environmental performance. Here are five examples of sustainable practices we use to manage and maintain reed beds, which often challenge traditional methods offered within our industry.
Reed beds are natural filtration systems crucial for conserving water quality. However, like any other wastewater asset, they must be regularly looked after to do their job correctly.
Unfortunately, reed beds are often neglected until a problem occurs, such as a pollution incident.
Alastair Pentland, Environmental Operations Manager at Oren Environmental, has outlined the seven reasons why routine reed bed maintenance is essential.
Suffolk-based Ian Quarton has been working at Severn Trent Services since 2019. He started as a jet vac driver and has since progressed to become a mechanical engineer.
In this interview, he speaks about his passion for continuous learning, his unwavering determination to fix things, and his pride in working in the water industry.
Having worked with many organisations that have private water and wastewater networks, she’s all too familiar with the challenges some face and is passionate about helping address them. One tool in her armoury is the Severn Trent Services Network Infrastructure Feasibility Study.
Carole says: “Today, like most organisations, our customers are worried about rapidly rising costs, changes in regulation, and operating more sustainably. These are problems that we pride ourselves on being able to help solve.
“Deploying network infrastructure feasibility studies helps us to gain a fantastic grasp of our customer’s networks and the issues we can proactively prevent and solve for them.”
Matt Booth is an instrumentation maintenance technician at Severn Trent Services, working in the mechanical, electrical, instrumentation control, and automation (MEICA) team.
He’s been with Severn Trent Services since 2021, lives in Halesowen, and outside of work, loves to ride his bike to the nearby velodrome, where he also coaches sessions for other cyclists.
We spoke to him about his role and how he and his colleague, Ash Adam, are helping to transform how water and wastewater assets are managed going forward.
Despite playing a vital role in water treatment, reed beds are often built and forgotten assets. Consequently, if any issue arises because a reed bed has been neglected – such as discharge consent failures or watercourse pollution incidents – proactive maintenance may not be possible, resulting in a complete refurbishment.
The reed bed refurbishment process can be expensive and lengthy, requiring several months of preparation beforehand and time to commission it afterwards once the work’s done.
To avoid refurbishment, reed beds should be routinely maintained over their lifespan – like any other water or wastewater asset. Otherwise, reed bed owners or managers face several unwieldy challenges that go hand in hand with a reed bed refurbishment.
Continue reading “The common challenges that arise from refurbishing reed beds”
