Prevention is better than cure when it comes to water pipe maintenance
Despite their age, many of these assets continue to operate well and achieve our service standards.
As a water company, it’s clearly our responsibility to deliver a quality water supply service to our customers. To ensure this happens we conduct regular assessments and maintenance of our high risk assets, which could be pipelines in key locations such as major roads, or those supplying large facilities such as the MCG or hospitals.
A number of factors can contribute to the condition of water pipes and cause them to crack, break or leak, including ground movement, corrosion, and external traffic loading. To combat these risks, we put our efforts into preventative maintenance and condition monitoring. Our condition monitoring program assesses the likelihood of a water pipe failure and involves:
- analysing the asset details and performance history
- conducting a thorough condition assessment
- determining the likelihood of failure.
We also consider the consequence of a failure, if one did occur, on an economic, social and environmental scale. These results then determine our course of action. We either:
- continue to monitor the pipeline
- repair the pipeline, or
- renew the pipeline.
For example, in 2008 we commenced major mains renewal work in the City of Moonee Valley. Work to renew high risk assets was also carried out in Macaulay Road, North Melbourne; Epsom Road, Flemington and Epsom Road, Kensington.
We also committed more than $6 million to replace around five kilometres of water mains in the City of Melbourne. Works in Lygon Street and Bourke Street marked the start of a three year, $62 million renewal program of our mains network in the inner city suburbs.
Around 430 metres of the Bourke Street water main were replaced between Spencer and King Streets and 200 metres of the Lygon Street water main were replaced between Victoria and Queensberry Streets.
Work has also been carried out on other major water mains in Flinders Street, Melbourne, Simpson Street, East Melbourne and Victoria Parade on the fringe of the CBD.
We made a major investment in Moonee Valley’s
water mains
We invested more than $2 million in 2008 to replace several major water mains serving the City of Moonee Valley. More than 1,700 metres of water mains were replaced at four sites.
To reduce disruption to the local area during the works, our contractors used a special technique to thread the new, flexible polyethylene pipe through the existing cast iron pipe in Ascot Vale Road rather than digging a full length trench. The contractors fed through the pipe in 60 metre lengths, welding the sections together on site.
To further limit disruption to residents’ water supply during the construction, our works occurred between 9:30am to 3:30pm on weekdays when many homes in the area were empty.