Posted by: Gerry O’Toole  

The Changi NEWater Plant, designed by Black & Veatch and owned and operated by SembCorp will produce NEWater for the first time in the coming few days.  This represents a major achievement for both companies and the project team.

The odds are that in any game of word association played among water geeks, Singapore and NEWater would trip off the tongue. The NEWater brand has become synonymous with Singapore and the Public Utilities Board (PUB). In Singapore the wider public also recognizes, and has readily accepted, NEWater as a key element in the nation’s total water management strategy, which relies on managing a balanced portfolio of sources including local catchment run off, imported water, desalinated water and NEWater – collectively known as the 4 National Taps.  The nation’s daily water demand is over 300 migd.  At the time of writing, NEWater provides about 15% of this through purified recycled water plants at Kranji, Bedok, Seletar and Ulu Pandan. Through the construction of the Changi NEWater Plant (CNWP), PUB has decided to increase NEWater production to 30% of daily water demand.

 As well as being the largest of the NEWater facilities at 228 Ml/d (50 migd) CNWP is also unique in that it is being largely built  on top of the impressive and recently commissioned Changi Water Reclamation Plant (CWRP), which itself is the largest and newest of PUB’s compact & covered activated sludge plants (the other WRPs being Kranji, Ulu Pandan and Seletar), and which is the terminal WRP at the end of the equally impressive deep tunnel sewerage scheme (DTSS).

 In 2005 Ulu Pandan NEWater Factory was PUB’s first NEWater venture into a Public Private Partnership (PPP) and the Changi NEWater Plant (CNWP) is a natural progression in this process. In February 2008 PUB selected SembCorp to provide NEWater for a period of 25-years based on an agreed tariff structure.  Before tender SembCorp joined forces with Black & Veatch to win the project. Black & Veatch worked closely with SemBCorp to understand their drivers and as a result successfully played a significant role in securing the project through smart conceptual design of the 228,000 m³/day (50migd) CNWP. Black & Veatch was subsequently appointed by SembCorp for detailed design the facility, which is by far the largest NEWater Plant in Singapore and one of the largest membrane based water reclamation plants in the world.  A key element has been the project team’s focus on designing with the triple bottom line (considering people and planet as well as profit) of optimizing the project solution, thus enabling SCU to submit the winning bid with a competitive NEWater tariff.