United Infrastructure’s Bacton gas works: integrity and safety lessons for engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
United Infrastructure has begun an £11m cathodic protection upgrade at National Gas’s Bacton Gas Terminal in North Norfolk, targeting buried steel pipelines and other soil- and water-submerged assets, with completion due in early 2028. Works are being delivered on a live upper-tier COMAH site, demanding detailed phasing, specialist corrosion engineering and stringent safety controls to maintain terminal operations. A Project Environmental Management Plan aligned with ISO 14001 is in place, signalling tighter asset integrity management similar to United’s previous programmes at St Fergus gas terminal.
Technical Brief
- Cathodic protection will convert buried steel pipelines into the cathode of an electrochemical cell, suppressing anodic corrosion.
- Protection extends to steel infrastructure both buried in soil and submerged in water around Bacton.
- Works occur in a live gas environment formally classified as an upper-tier COMAH installation by HSE.
- COMAH status drives stringent permit-to-work, isolation, and interface controls between construction and terminal operations.
- United Infrastructure is leveraging prior gas-terminal asset integrity experience from St Fergus on Scotland’s north-east coast.
- A Project Environmental Management Plan is structured to meet ISO 14001 environmental management requirements.
Our Take
The early‑2028 horizon aligns with other long‑duration UK infrastructure programmes in our coverage, which typically lock in specialist contractors like United Infrastructure for multi‑year frameworks and can smooth revenue volatility compared with shorter housing retrofit jobs such as its Bromsgrove and Haringey council frameworks.
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.
