TOBIN, in association with Mouchel, were commissioned in 2005 to assist Roscommon County Council in the staged implementation of a Water Conservation and Network Management Project.
By the mid noughties, over half of Co. Roscommon’s 2,000 kilometre watermain network was made up of uPVC pipes, some of which had been inherited from privately operated Group Water Schemes within the previous 40 years. It is therefore not surprising that many areas of this extensive system required immediate attention to ensure that adequate levels of water conservation were being achieved. To address this, Roscommon County Council enlisted the services of the TOBIN water conservation team. Working in partnership with Mouchel, the TOBIN team was tasked with the challenge of establishing the pipe replacement works necessary along with the most suitable systems and resources required to facilitate the proper management of the network, including leakage control management. The scope of the work, extensive in terms of its scale and its objectives, was broken into 3 main stages as follows:
Stage 1 – Getting A Handle On It
Stage 1 of this water conservation project saw TOBIN design almost 100 District Meter Areas (DMAs) and the subsequent installation of new bulk DMA water meters in the network. These meters can be read remotely at a single control centre for the entire operational over-haul of the network.
Stage 2 – Locating the Leaks
From the operational system established at Stage 1, the TOBIN team were then able to start undertaking water audits for each DMA from the water meter data being relayed to the control centre. The objective here was to identify and pin point areas with the highest levels of Unaccounted for Water (UFW) and potential leakage. From this, a leak recording database was established to assist with compiling accurate records and locations of all leaks detected and repaired to date. This database was an essential requirement in fixing the problem.
Stage 3 – Fixing the Problem
Stages 1 and 2 formed the basis for the third and final stage, Stage 3. Stage 3 encompassed more of a traditional consultancy role in assisting Roscommon County Council with the procurement and administration of watermain replacement contracts.
This was certainly one of the more complex and technically challenging projects brought to us at TOBIN Consulting Engineers in recent years. The fundamental approach adopted by Patrick Cunningham and his team here at TOBIN was to maintain a strict and relentless commitment to the idea of conservation. Two of the main core values instilled in all TOBIN employees here include Sustainability and People and Relationships and it is therefore unsurprising that in this instance, TOBIN were successful in partnering with Mouchel to provide Roscommon County Council with a tailored and sustainable approach to ensuring the long term conservation of their water network.
