Thames Water’s £5.7bn White Horse Reservoir: design and risk notes for engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on New Civil Engineer
30 Second Briefing
Thames Water has shortlisted three joint ventures to compete for a £5.7bn main works contract to build the proposed White Horse Reservoir near Abingdon, Oxfordshire, a major new strategic storage asset for the Thames catchment. The winning consortium will be responsible for bulk earthworks, dam and embankment construction, intake and outlet structures, and large-diameter raw water and treated water pipelines. Geotechnical and civil teams will face complex foundation design on alluvial and chalk strata, reservoir safety compliance under the UK Reservoirs Act, and long-term seepage and uplift control.
Technical Brief
- Main works contract is valued at £5.7bn, indicating a mega-scale, multi-phase construction programme.
- Procurement is structured around three shortlisted joint ventures, implying competitive design-and-delivery methodologies.
- Health and safety management systems will need to align with CDM Regulations and water-sector process safety norms.
- Long programme duration will require robust cost-escalation, risk, and supply-chain safety management over multiple regulatory periods.
Our Take
Recent Thames Water pieces in our database – including the £150M Thames Valley treatment upgrades with Costain and the Camberley Sewage Treatment Works project – show a parallel programme of smaller compliance and refurbishment jobs that will compete with White Horse Reservoir for internal engineering and delivery capacity.
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.
