Barhale completes critical Fortis Green trunk main upgrade to boost resilience

Barhale, in collaboration with Thames Water, has successfully completed the major upgrade of a vital trunk main at Fortis Green in North London.

The £16.8M project strengthens network resilience and protects customer supplies for more than 35,000 properties in North London. It has been delivered under Thames Water’s AMP7 Trunk Main programme, which targets critical assets across the capital where failure could cause severe disruption.

Barhale worked closely with Thames Water to replace 2.4 kilometres of aging 24” steel trunk main using a combination of micro-tunnelling and open cut trenching techniques. Extensive collaboration throughout the project lifecycle led to a significant revision to the reference solution, moving the existing pipeline away from the A406 North Circular Road – and roughly 16M annual vehicle movements – to eliminate potential traffic delays and reduce disruption for residents during construction.

Mark Taylor, Thames Water’s Director of Delivery from London Infrastructure emphasised the criticality of building resilience into the network.

“Population growth and climate change are putting increased pressure on water infrastructure,” he said. “While Fortis Green was primarily a project to address a critical asset reaching the end of its natural life, it also presented an opportunity to upgrade part of the network and strengthen its resilience.”

Shane Gorman, Barhale’s Water Director (Southern Region) highlighted the importance of the project’s successful delivery.

“Thanks to our extensive modelling and changes to the reference design we have been able to improve the capacity and the dynamic flow performance of the pipeline,” he said. “The re-engineering of the solution also enabled Barhale to achieve a 14.9% reduction in cost over the reference solution and significant carbon savings of 10,800tCO2e. This project is a strong example of how strategic engineering and early collaboration can deliver sustainable, high-value outcomes.”