World of Difference Award

Glencorse Water Treatment Works, which supplies nearly 50,000 residents in Edinburgh, has adopted an innovative treatment solution that allows a simple low-energy process to be fed by gravity from raw water reservoirs 25 miles away in the Scottish Borders. As well as hosting the world’s first mobile pipe production plant, Glencorse is also home to Scotland’s largest green roof, an efficient new water treatment process and a new hydro-electric turbine. With allowances for at least 25 years of future growth, Glencorse WTW will increase the availability of water within the distribution network allowing additional housing and businesses to be built in the capital.

Careful planning and re-routing of the new water pipelines took place in order to avoid badger and otter sites, while locally sourced building materials and a sustainable drainage system ensured an environmentally sensitive design. The location of the mobile pipe production plant immediately adjacent to the pipeline route allowed pipes to be hauled directly to the pipeline working area, negating the need to use public highways. The result was a 75% reduction in lorry journeys and a reduction of 1,530 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.

The main process requirement for Glencorse was for a flocculation stage and a rapid gravity filtration stage. This presented an opportunity to incorporate a Counter Current Dissolved Air Flotation Filtration (COCODAFF) process, reducing the overall footprint of the treatment works. In addition, the ability of the COCODAFF to process higher than specified filtration rates allowed Scottish Water to value engineer the number of process units down from ten to eight, realising further savings on construction and M&E costs. A further example of innovation is the fully intelligent and integrated control system. The highly resilient optimised plant network monitoring provides proactive fault finding and enables preventative maintenance, creating reductions in OPEX – both in energy and maintenance.

Scottish Water’s largest ever consultation exercise was undertaken on the Glencorse Project and an independent audit confirmed the project’s success in carrying out an exemplary public consultation in support of the new Works Planning Application. During the project, 250 engineering students from universities of Heriot Watt, Abertay and Edinburgh were also given the opportunity to attend lectures provided by the project team and to visit the Glencorse site.

Geoff Aitkenhead, Scottish Water’s Asset Management Director said: “Scottish Water is delighted that the Glencorse Water Project has received this outstanding international accolade from CIWEM. The facility is proof that such large-scale projects can be sustainable, non-obtrusive and built with the consent and consideration of the neighbouring community in mind. Glencorse provides state-of-the-art thinking in the delivery of renewable resources in the long-term and the innovative use of new pipeline manufacturing methods in the short-term. Blending sensitively into the Pentland Hills with the largest grass roof in the UK, Glencorse will supply Scotland’s ancient capital with 21st century drinking water. We are delighted that our efforts and achievements have been recognised in this way.”