WSP UK Ltd were appointed following an open tender exercise via the Council’s procurement portal. A contract was issued for £47,638 for the provision of Drainage Management Services for Hereford Enterprise Zone for a period of up to two years from 25 June 2018. This contract is still extant so this represents an extension to that contract.

The contract was envisaged to work through a number of individual projects to help facilitate the completion of the preparatory works on unsold areas of the Zone. Its focus was to inform the foul drainage capacity installation, and strategic approach to Sustainable Drainage Systems (SUDs) to enable all the remaining plots to be made ready for sale.

However, the foul drainage design work required to connect the Shell Store to the network has proved more complicated and protracted than initially foreseen. This has necessitated multiple additional site visits, surveys and numerous iterations of drawings and designs in order to agree a solution with Welsh Water (the statutory waste water).

This particular connection is fundamental to the operability of the Shell Store and has to be progressed as a matter of urgency. There is still a good deal of activity required to complete this individual task to steer the tender and installation of these works including advising on the connection of the adjoining development plot. This project alone will use up the remainder of the budget on this contract.

However, this will leave no resource to carry out the final component of the original specification - namely the preparation of the North Magazine site. We have secured LEP Growth Deal money to make that site investor–ready this financial year and drainage and SUDs advice are an important part of the masterplanning work for that, which should ideally start now and run in parallel with the Shell Store works.

It would be difficult to procure a drainage consultant purely for this task which will be of modest cost and hence limited attractiveness as a stand-alone tender. WSP are very familiar with the locality from the work already undertaken under the existing contract and there is direct applicability to the Shell Store work in particular to what needs to be devised for the larger, next door site.

The proposal is to extend the existing drainage contract to accommodate this remaining project and complete the overall strategic review of drainage planning works for the whole HEZ as a consequence.

The hourly rates proposed are the same as previously procured and set out in the existing contract.

There is sufficient budget available in the Enterprise Zone Capital allocation to meet this increase