Barhale to build Alconbury wastewater capacity: design and HDD notes for engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Anglian Water’s @one Alliance has awarded Barhale a £14.8m contract to build a 7.5km twin wastewater pipeline, with 400mm, 315mm and 250mm diameters, to serve the 6,200-home Alconbury Weald development and 190,000 sq m of employment space in Cambridgeshire. The line, mainly open-cut around the eastern side of Huntingdon and discharging 144 l/s to Huntingdon Water Recycling Centre, avoids the town centre and crosses mostly agricultural land. Ten HDD drives include 355m-long 630mm sleeves under the East Coast Main Line and 292m-long 400mm sleeves beneath the River Great Ouse, with completion targeted for November 2027.
Technical Brief
- New terminal pumping station at Alconbury Weald will be constructed by developer Urban&Civic to feed the twin main.
- Route includes 1.5km across the former RAF Alconbury development footprint, with the balance through agricultural land.
- Alignment deliberately skirts Huntingdon town centre to avoid traffic disruption and complex urban utility interfaces.
- Ten HDD drives are planned, with relatively wet ground conditions increasing drilling fluid management and stability risks.
- Under the East Coast Main Line, Barhale will install twin 355m-long, 630mm sleeves for subsequent 400mm sliplining.
- Beneath the River Great Ouse, twin 292m-long, 400mm HDD sleeves will carry the 250mm pipeline.
- Track mats and Bailey bridges will be deployed at the river crossing to span drainage dykes and protect ridge‑and‑furrow archaeology.
- A Wacker Neuson off-road dumper with interchangeable skip/flatbed will be trialled to optimise materials haulage and site safety.
Our Take
Barhale’s repeat work with Anglian Water and the @one Alliance at Alconbury, following the Raunds Cypermethrin plant and the £18m Walton-on-the-Naze storm scheme, signals that it is becoming a go‑to contractor for complex wet‑infrastructure packages in Anglian’s region.
The 7.5 km wastewater transfer to Huntingdon Water Recycling Centre, with multiple HDD crossings under the East Coast Main Line and River Great Ouse, places this scheme at the more technically demanding end of recent UK wastewater pipelines in our infrastructure database, which typically involve fewer major third‑party interfaces.
The 144 l/s discharge designed to head off a forecast capacity shortfall by 2027 at Alconbury Weald underlines how Anglian Water is now locking in off‑site treatment capacity earlier in the development cycle, a pattern also evident in other growth‑area schemes in our coverage where new towns are tied to existing regional recycling centres rather than standalone plants.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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