H. E. Services and Southern Water: Hampshire sewer relining lessons for engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Southern Water is investing £2m to reinforce a repeatedly failing sewer section at Ashurst Bridge near Totton, relining more than 1,000 metres of pipe, including a 430‑metre stretch in the current phase. Final works over the next three weeks along Ashurst Bridge Road and Bull Copse Road require sections of the network to be taken offline, with tanker operations used to manage flows and maintain wastewater services. H. E. Services’ Hungerford depot supplied a Komatsu PC138 excavator, coordinated closely with the contractor to meet programme and performance requirements.
Technical Brief
- Komatsu PC138 excavator from H. E. Services’ Hungerford depot selected as primary earthmoving plant.
- Machine choice suits confined urban corridors along Ashurst Bridge Road and Bull Copse Road.
- Repeated sewer failures in recent years indicate localised structural or ground-movement vulnerability in this section.
- Three‑week final phase requires tight plant availability and minimal downtime from the hired excavator.
- Reliability of a single key excavator becomes critical where lining works are sequenced in narrow roadways.
Our Take
With Thames Water’s £5.7bn White Horse Reservoir proposal also intended to support Hampshire, Southern Water’s incremental network upgrades in places like Totton are likely aimed at ensuring downstream sewer capacity and environmental compliance ahead of any future increase in regional water transfers.
Use of Komatsu plant on this relatively small 430m lining job underlines how OEMs are embedded not just on headline tunnelling works like the Southampton Link Main, but also on short-duration, three‑week interventions where reliability and rapid mobilisation are critical to minimising disruption on constrained roads such as Ashurst Bridge Road and Bull Copse Road.
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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