Barhale wins National Grid flood protection contracts

Barhale, a civil engineering and infrastructure specialist company, have been appointed to three flood defence contracts by the National Grid in Hertfordshire and in Surrey.

The contracts, costing a total sum of £7.5M, will protect the electricity substations at Waltham Cross, a 400/275 kV substation, and West Weybridge, which has a 400kV substation and a 132 kV substation.

The contracts were awarded through the National Grid’s Substation Flood Defence Framework which aims to protect the nation’s electricity supply network from disruption through flooding and thus improve the reliability of energy supply networks.

Flood defence works on each of the substation will include the construction of taller, reinforced walls while, at the West Weybridge substations, steel sheet piling will be used to construct the substation structure quickly and with a low carbon footprint.

It is predicted that, as global warming continues and the sea levels inevitably rise, more and more of the UK will be under water and will subsequently become more prone to flooding, making the protection of our utilities networks from flooding all the more imperative as its likelihood can only increase.

The Regional Director of Barhale, Phil Cull stated: “In recent years we have seen a number of significant floods. These can have a huge impact such as we saw with the floods of summer 2007 which disrupted essential services and are estimated to have left a bill of £3.2Bn.

“The scheme at Waltham Cross and the two at West Weybridge will significantly improve the transmission network’s resilience, reducing the odds of flood disruption at each of these sites to that of a one in a thousand year event.”

Barhale is a civil engineering and infrastructure specialist with over 35 years of experience in the construction industry, after having been founded in 1980 by the current chairman, Dennis Curran.

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