Continuous Water Quality Monitoring (CWQM)

Water companies have a duty under Section 82 of the Environment Act to protect the environment from the effects of discharges from storm overflows and wastewater treatment works. Water companies are required to monitor the quality of water potentially affected by, upstream and downstream, discharges from these assets.

This requires the monitoring of the following parameters: (a) levels of dissolved oxygen, (b) temperature and pH values, (c) turbidity, (d) levels of ammonia, and (e) levels of conductivity, and (f) anything else specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State. These measurements will typically be made in rivers and/or a local measurement kiosk and we would request evidence for the equipment operating in such an environment both during routine operation and under exceptional conditions such as storms.

Appropriate and independent 3rd party validation of sensor monitoring technology performance would be of interest at this stage. It is expected that the systems will be mounted directly in the river or will required a sample pumping into a kiosk.

Such equipment is required. All equipment must have its own power supply, ancillaries and logger/telemetry unit.

The application also requires the functionality to achieve the following: - Continuously monitor and log data (every 15 minutes) in river levels as low as 40mm. - Provide a telemetry interface and a public facing portal which can display values in near real time and provide reporting capabilities. Data should be exportable via API and other common interfaces.

United Utilities operate approximately 2300 Combined Sewer Overflows, and 575 Wastewater Treatment works which are impacted by this new requirement. The overall numbers of installations for AMP8 (2025-2030) are confirmed at 633 to provide 25% coverage.

The remaining 75% will be delivered in AMP9 (2030-2035). United Utilities are looking for indicative costs, per installation, based on the following procurement routes: - Supply of instrumentation - Design, build and installation of instrumentation sampling kiosks - Service and maintenance of the above at the mandated 4 weekly intervals - Provision, management and administration of telemetry and a web based portal for the above. - Readings taken every 15 minutes.

All readings to be transmitted every 20 minutes. - Supply to monitor equipment health and generated data on a continual basis and report anomalies to United Utilities. Instrumentation and the monitoring arrangement shall be suitable for monitoring the required parameters in an appropriate range for the application.

Solutions may be based on multi-parameter sondes, process instrumentation or chemistry analysers or a combination of either. All provision shall comply with the DEFRA Continuous Water Quality Programme Interim Technical Standard V1.0 Issue 1.0 August 2024.

In addition, all installations shall comply with Environment Agency Regulatory Position Statement 333 Installing Small Scale Monitoring Instruments and Associated Equipment Alongside In Main River Watercourses 11th March 2025. We require 2 installation solutions: For planning pumped kiosk-based systems should be used (Option 1).

In river monitoring via stilling tube (Option 2). We want to understand: - Proposed solutions - Costs - Interest to provide or ability to provide all elements associated - Risks - Volume supply capacity per month/year - Accuracy/Uncertainty - Repeatability - Maintenance intervals - Integration We require interested parties to work with Defra and regulators to establish an accredited quality system for the calibration and maintenance of real time continuous water quality monitors.

Further detail on governance and assurance requirements is expected in the technical guidance and implementing legislation. A need to comply with an industry-wide accreditation process (such as MCERTS) should be accounted for which will likely require product certification prior to use at cost to the Supplier.

Should you have any additional complimentary services available to supplement this programme of work please provide technical and commercial details of this. Please refer to: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/installing-sma... ALL VALUES & DATES ARE INDICATIVE