The Thames Water Ring Main: The Future

Abstract

Commissioning of the Thames Water ring main Phase 2 tunnels in the spring of 1994 signalled an important milestone for major investment on London's watertreatment and trunk distribution systems. This included not only the ring main itself, but also the progressive installation of advanced water treatment processes in the water-treatment works supplying the city, due for completion at the end of 1998. This paper reviews the benefits of the ring main and looks at future developments, focused largely in local distribution rehabilitation and leakage control. The objectives and benefits of future possible extensions of the ring main are discussed, and a configuration is put forward as potential for development in the long term.

Politics of The Ring: Limits to Public Participation in Engineering Practice

“…This met fertile wider political ground as the government pressed a positive view of denationalization 12. A recurring feature of the discourse was showing how difficulties encountered in the public phase, said to have almost derailed the scheme (Bensted, ), were overcome by private management approaches. Furthermore, it was important in a wider sense to draw a line between the public and private eras of Ring Main control (the Ring Main was rebranded the ‘Thames Water Ring Main’)––accentuating the differences and downplaying continuations.…”

“…The IChemE conditions and the (innovative, modern) EPBMs came to be emblematic of the benefits of privatization (Clarke and Mackenzie, ; Bensted, ), and are key examples of how discontinuities between the public and private eras of ownership were presented more widely. However, the clear public–private distinction implied by the discourse around IChemE in particular underplays the complexity of the project organization in the municipal era in which private‐sector influence and expertise were always a substantial element.…”