UK water companies could benefit hugely from hiring pump equipment and bespoke pumping solutions from pump specialists, rather than outlaying huge sums for ‘fixed’ pumps that may not always be reliable or appropriate for their needs (fixed pump servicing costs could also be avoided). Yet so many major water companies continue to ‘play safe’ by persevering with their fixed water pumping system, or by needlessly investing heavily in a new one.

Explaining the water industry’s reluctance...

The procurement side of the water industry has always been much more comfortable with pump purchase than with pump hire because of an issue relating to terms & conditions. In the construction industry, where hiring rather than buying equipment is the accepted norm, agreeing terms & conditions is simple, as the majority of construction companies adopt the Construction Plant Association (CPA) standard terms & conditions for equipment hire. But there is no similar equivalent for the water industry.

Although this issue can create difficulties for the supplier, and delays for the client; the advantages offered by renting pumps on an ‘as needed’ basis are simply too great to ignore, with low cost being the greatest one.

Why water companies need pumps

For water companies the range of pump applications can be wide:

• Clean water, sludge and slurry pumping

• Pumping during repairs and upgrades to treatment works

• Over-pumping chambers during pump station maintenance (and as emergency back-up in the event of a pumping station failure)

• Reservoir draining, refilling and ‘topping up’

• The pumping out of huge digester tanks during sewage works redevelopments, and

• Other applications relating to water supply and waste management

From this list, it is plainly evident that so many situations could require emergency pumping measures – measures that might not be met via taking the pump purchasing option. All this makes hiring pumps a timely solution, too.

Mind-boggling amounts of water provision

The number of homes that different UK water companies supply clean water to (and take away the sewage/waste water from) runs into millions, of course. UK water companies are responsible for a highly-mixed infrastructure across rural and urban locations, in fact.

Thames Water (the UK’s biggest water company) covers 5,000 square miles and provides eight million customers with drinking water from 31,000km of water mains, treated at 100 treatment works. They constantly monitor the quality of their water and perform over 400,000 tests each year to ensure it is of the highest standard. They are not alone - similar statistics are readily available for all of the UK’s water companies.

What does not bear thinking about is what would happen if one or more of these water companies found themselves amid a crisis of potentially catastrophic proportions (due to their fixed pumping system(s) developing a fault or breaking down altogether), but did not have a contingency pump rental plan in place to cover themselves for such a frightening eventuality.

About contingency plans (and why hiring beats purchasing every time)

As part of a contingency plan, a reputable pump leasing company will always do a site survey and agree plans to safeguard a water company from the consequences of a pumping system failure. What is more, as well as being the ideal emergency back-up option, rented pumps can be:

• Used immediately;

• Hired on a short contract basis, and then returned. With most sites (treatment works, sewage works, and reservoirs, etc.,) only requiring maintenance, upgrades and draining during certain months of year, this makes pumps for hire a cost-effective alternative to purchased pumps;

• The perfect ‘stop gap’ between the removal of an existing fixed pumping system (e.g. at a pumping station owned by a water company) and the installation of a new one; and

• Added to a water company’s existing pumping system when extra pumping is required.

Specialist pump hire companies are manned by expert engineers

An established pump rental company with the capacity to handle any type of emergency pumping job on a

water company’s behalf will offer a fast, friendly and highly responsive service that includes: proven expertise in environmental issues; genuine 24/7 availability for planned and emergency support; fast surveys and advice from expert engineers with utilities experience..

All this makes hiring pumps, rather than purchasing, the perfect solution for companies in the water industry, with the aforementioned terms & conditions issue paling into insignificance when compared with the financial savings to be had through choosing the pump hire option.