Thames Water is the United Kingdom’s largest water and wastewater services provider with more than 15 million customers. As part of its business, Thames Water delivers an average of 2,600 million liters of drinking water every day. The company’s cast-iron water mains in many areas of London and the Thames Valley are among the oldest in the UK, and many of them are wearing out.

Thames Water employees have been working hard to replace the smaller distribution mains during the past 15 years, but now the larger trunk mains are of growing concern. A burst in just one of the these can leave thousands of customers without water, cause major flooding, and disrupt transport routes.

Tim Evans, water network innovation manager, explains how new technology is paving the way for a more sustainable replacement approach. “It’s costly to replace pipes, so we need to prioritize which are the riskiest ones,” he says. “A big challenge with cast iron is that it corrodes unevenly, and the corrosion is very hard to detect.”

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