Who we are...
President, Society of
Operations Engineers
Howard Seymour
Chair, Bureau of
Engineer Surveyors
Vince Sharpe
Chair, Institution
of Plant Engineers
Alan Fitzpatrick
CEO, Society of
Operations Engineers
Bruce McGill
The Society of Operations
Engineers is a licensed member of the
Engineering Council and Society for
the Environment.
Registered in England:
Company No. 3667147
Registered Charity: No.1081753
A company limited by guarantee.
SOE represents the Bureau of
Engineering Surveyors (BES), the
Institution of Operations Engineers
(IOE), the Institution of Plant Engineers
(IPlantE) and the Institute of Road
Transport Engineers (IRTE), which are
all professional sectors of the SOE and
each dedicated to developing the skills
of their members in their specialist
areas of activity engineering.
Registered O ce: 22 Greencoat
Place, London SW1P 1PR
Tel: 020 7630 1111
Fax: 020 7630 6677
Email: soe@soe.org.uk
www.soe.org.uk
© 2019 The Society of Operations
Engineers
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CBP20REV18
London sewer plugged by
'whale-sized' concreteberg
Thames Water is to remove what it says
is a record-busting ‘concreteberg’ from
under the streets of central London after
discovering an industrial amount of solidified
cement plugging three Victorian sewers.
The work, in Islington, will see teams
manually chip away at the rock-hard mass,
which is thought to be at least 100 metres
long and weighing in at 105 tonnes – as
heavy as a blue whale.
Thames Water says that the operation
will cost at least several hundred thousand
pounds to clear, using a range of cutting
tools, including jackhammer pneumatic drills
and high-pressure jets.
Tankers are also on standby to pump
out waste 24 hours a day to protect the
environment and ensure nearby properties
and businesses are not flooded with sewage
caused by the blockage.
Alex Saunders, Thames Water operations
manager, explains: “Normally blockages are
caused by fat, oil and wet wipes building up in
the sewer but unfortunately, in this case, it’s
rock-hard concrete. It’s in there and set to
the Victorian brickwork, so we need to chip
away at it to get it removed.
“This is not the first time damage has
been caused by people pouring concrete into
our sewers, but it’s certainly the worst we’ve
seen. It’s very frustrating and takes a great
amount of time and effort to resolve.
"We’re now doing everything we can to
deal with it as quickly as possible, making
sure our customers don’t have to suffer
because of this mindless abuse of our
network.”
The company has pledged to invest
heavily to improve the network and increase
monitoring as part of its business plan for
2020-25 – using up to 200,000 new sewer
depth digital monitors. It has also proposed
to reduce pollution by 30%.
An investigation into how the concrete
got into the sewer, and to recover costs, is
underway.
DIP-POR 344980/1
6 www.operationsengineer.org.uk June 2019
/www.soe.org.uk
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