Bethell Construction

SMSO & MESO

For a 5 year period, Bethell Construction Ltd successfully operated the SMSO contract for the designated ‘Eastern’ region within the United Utilities coverage area. In simple terms this area covered 11 of the local authorities within the Greater Manchester area, including the major populations of Manchester, Trafford and Stockport. For 5 years prior to this, Bethell operated minor works contracts for in excess of 20 local authorities who held agency agreements with United Utilities for the maintenance of the wastewater network within their boundaries.

The contract was managed and administered from Bethell’s logistically well placed Head Office and yard facility at Kearsley, Bolton and included: -
• A 24 hour call centre, operated by staff trained and experienced in processing and dealing with wastewater network work instructions, this was specifically established for the contract at Kearsley
• Key operational tasks controlled from the call centre, with work orders being issued to operational teams, feedback on works progress being issued to the client for customer updates
• RASWA notices being opened, updated and closed as required, processing of key client KPI information on dealing with reactive incidents ensuring required customer service levels were achieved, etc.

Two main elements of ‘Reactive’ and ‘Planned’ work orders formed the structure of the contract works. Reactive works would comprise of work elements such as: -
• Sewer blockage clearance
• ‘Fast pass’ CCTV sewer surveys to identify defects for immediate action
• Reactive sewer de-silts
• Making safe items of immediate danger such as missing manhole cover and frames or voids appearing in open carriageway as a consequence of a sewer collapse, etc.

For a 4 year period, Bethell successfully operated the MESO contract within the ‘eastern’ region of United Utilities coverage area which entailed 11 of the local authority areas within the Greater Manchester region. The contract essentially covered the reactive and planned maintenance of all United Utilities network pumping stations within the eastern region.

The contract was run in effect ‘side by side’ with the SMSO contract as both contracts had various operational interfaces.

Managed from Bethell’s Head Office facility at Kearsley, Bolton, work orders were received via the 24 hour call centre before being issued to the in-house operational teams for implementation.

As with the SMSO contract, work orders were issued as either reactive or planned works.

Reactive works would usually entail pump blockage clearance or response to equipment failure. To ensure that client’s requirements were met in accordance with contract customer response requirements, operational and management teams were available on a 24 hour rota basis to deal effectively with all operational issues.

Planned works would entail works from pump replacements, general building improvement and maintenance to full station refurbishment projects. The major feature of the planned works regime was the scheduled station visits to undertaken instructed maintenance and inspection.

Throughout the duration of the contract, further installations were continually added to the planned maintenance regime as new assets, predominately CSO chambers with powered screens, were constructed on the wastewater network, with Bethell assisting in the transition as new installations were handed over to UU operational teams for maintenance.