Galliford Try river monitoring in Devon and Cornwall: design notes for engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell

First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Galliford Try’s Water Technologies team has secured Phase 1 of South West Water’s continuous water quality monitoring programme, installing 86 automatic samplers across wastewater assets in Devon and Cornwall to meet Section 82 Environment Act obligations. Sensors from RS Hydro will measure dissolved oxygen, temperature, pH, turbidity and ammonia both upstream and downstream of storm overflows and sewage treatment works, with data due for public release in 2030. 3D scanning and GIS integration will be used to optimise site selection, layout planning and installation logistics.
Technical Brief
- Phase 1 CWQM deployment sits within South West Water’s Tier 2 delivery framework, led by Galliford Try.
- Galliford Try Water Technologies delivers CWQM as part of the Environment division’s wider asset management offering.
- GIS integration supports hydraulic catchment mapping, optimising sampler locations relative to storm overflow and treatment works hydraulics.
Our Take
Within our 247 Infrastructure stories, relatively few focus on river-quality monitoring in the United Kingdom, so Galliford Try’s work for South West Water in Devon and Cornwall positions it in a niche but increasingly scrutinised part of the water sector.
Deploying 86 automatic samplers across wastewater assets suggests South West Water is moving towards a more defensible evidence base ahead of tighter regulatory and public reporting expectations around 2030, which could influence how other UK utilities structure their monitoring programmes.
The long time horizon to 2030 for publishing monitoring data indicates that Galliford Try and RS Hydro are likely to be involved not only in installation but in lifecycle support and data integration, a pattern seen in other sustainability-tagged infrastructure contracts where monitoring becomes an ongoing service rather than a one-off project.
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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