Water Industry - Scottish Government Investment Group - Committed List performance progress report: quarter two 2023-2024

7. Progress in delivering SR15 Completion Projects

SR15 completion projects are reported in each of the water and wastewater portfolios in Sections 4 and 5 of this report. For clarity, all completion projects are summarised in this section. By way of recap, there are two categories of SR15 completion projects:

• Delayed Projects – projects that were expected to complete by the end of SR15 but were impacted by Covid-19, re-optioneering, scope change, construction risk and third-party risk.
• Planned Projects – projects that commenced in SR15 but were always expected to complete during SR21.

Table 1 below summarises the current status of each category.

The remaining investment represents circa 2% of the total SR15 programme.

By way of further explanation:

Delayed Projects

At the end of Q2 2023/24 we had planned to have 84 of the 86 delayed SR15 projects through acceptance (Table 1). However, we still have 24 delayed projects (3 pre-start on site and 21 in construction- shown in the ‘Actual at Q2 2023-24’ column of Table 1) to achieve Gate 100 acceptance.

There are 3 projects forecasting acceptance in Q3: Westbank Quadrant, Uig WTW and Newmore WTW.

The following projects that are yet to start on site are:

• Rockcliffe Bathing Water (BW) - Improvement to Sufficient Status. Temporary treatment is in place to deliver bathing water compliance. Extensive community engagement has taken place - planning consents and marine licensing applications are being worked through and, if achieved, will allow a start on site circa July 2024 and a revised acceptance date will be established.
• IR18 - Boardhouse WTW Inlet Screen. The SR15 output was for the installation of a silt curtain. During project development further essential requirements were identified and developed which created a much larger project which is now in place and expected to start on site circa July 2024 – consideration will be given to signing off the SR15 output once the silt curtain is in place.
• Roberton WTW - pH correction for coagulation. An operational solution was put in place to deliver the SR15 output but was unsuccessful – a new project to install a coagulation control system has been developed and is expected to start on site in March 2024 and reach acceptance by February 2026.

Planned Projects

46 projects have now achieved Gate 100 acceptance against a target for Q2 2023/24 of 54.

1 of the Planned projects is forecasting completion in Q3 (Invercannie), with a further 4 in Q4 (Ardrishaig, Dhu Loch, Afton WTW, Wick East).

The following projects are yet to start on site:

• Sanday WTW – During project development it became clear that the improvements to this site need to be integrated with the project to install the new Gremista pipeline to ensure a holistic solution to the area. The pipeline is complete, and the design of the new clear water tanks is progressing, and it is currently forecast that all works will be concluded by January 2025.
• South Uist WTW New Source. The SR15 output is being delivered by refurbishment works and therefore this project will be closed in Q3.
• IR18 - Upperton (Longriggend) WWTW. The project had to be re-scoped and to ensure the SR15 output will be delivered – expected to start on site by April 2024.

More detail on the SR15 Completion projects is given in the presentation slide decks shared and discussed with DWQR and SEPA (Link to slides decks online).