United Utilities spends about £600 million per annum across our water, wastewater, gas and electricity distribution networks to support the capital investment programme and is our biggest spend area.
Capital Programmes are leading our AX5 procurement strategy for the estimated £4 billion water, wastewater and electricity distribution capital investment between 2010 and 2015. You can find out more about AX5 here.
Responsibility is split between two sub-categories, one for direct procurement (tier 1 contractors and partners) and one for suppliers of goods and services that can be used by our Tier1 contractors and partners (kit equipment.)
Tier 1 contractors and partners
Typical Tier 1 contracts include:-
- Infrastructure - usually work in the highways or public / private land and would include planned and unplanned repairs to our networks
- Non Infrastructure - work on United Utilities' treatment works
In some areas, we seek to establish long term partnerships with a small number of carefully selected contractors, these are our partners.
If we do not follow the partner route, we award one-off turn-key projects via competitive tender. Any contractors successful in the tenders are called our Tier 1 contractors.
Tier 2 - Kit equipment
This category relates to the purchase of goods for the capital investment programme in our water business and includes the acquisition of:
- Process equipment such as filters and membranes
- Mechanical equipment such as pumps and screening equipment
- Waterworks materials such as pipes, valves and couplings
- Electrical equipment such as Motor Control Centres, Programmable Logic Controllers and services such as Systems Integration
- Instrumentation such as chlorine, colour and ammonia analysers
- Services such as topographical, asbestos and site investigation surveys