HBPW ‘Partnership’ Reaps Second Top Engineering Award

A ground-breaking product, which HBPW has been instrumental in promoting to the British rail industry, has been named as an award winner by the prestigious Permanent Way Institution (PWI), the premier body for rail infrastructure engineering in the United Kingdom.

And, speaking after the announcement, which will be adjudicated in the next 24 hours, Senior Partner, Paul Withers, paid tribute to the team at Civil Water Management (CWM) along with its Network Rail PADS approved advanced track drainage system, TDS 400.

He said: “I am absolutely delighted for Civil Water Management who have been championing TDS400 to civil engineers and specifiers for many years.   

“Network Rail (NR) has responsibility for somewhere in the region of 20,000 miles of track and, by definition, everything entering that sector, be it a new company or, indeed an innovative product like this one, has to jump through many hoops and quite rightly so, because of all the health and safety issues requirements.

“However, I am genuinely pleased that the rail industry is finally recognising that TDS400, with its key to improving workforce safety, preventing rail line flooding and supporting the drive to net-zero, has a major role to play building resilience into rail infrastructure in the UK.

“I am equally delighted that HBPW has played its part in this emerging success story with its pro-bono engineering design work for CWM, which has involved team input across a number of NR and National Highways schemes. We remain committed to supporting innovators and innovation.”

The team at CWM had to present a paper as part of its submission into the PWI Climate Change Adaptation and Decarbonisation Award competition and was subsequently advised of its pending success with the ‘big reveal’ – the nature of the exact award – just 24 hours away.

A prize-giving ceremony is being held at Birmingham’s MacDonald Burlington Hotel tonight with PWI Operations Director, Kate Hatwell, pre-announcing: “I am delighted to inform you that your paper has been awarded one of the prizes…….many congratulations on your success and I look forward to welcoming you to the celebration event.”

TDS400 has already been used on a number of occasions by Network Rail, including as part of a Line Speed Improvement project at Tuffley on the Bristol to Gloucester line.

National Highways have also used the system on several occasions, including by the A14 Integrated Delivery team, who deployed TDS400 with great success as part of the Cambridge Bypass scheme, resulting in major cost savings.

Elsewhere on the A50, where TDS400 was used to remediate almost entirely failed drainage systems, this is now one of the few highways in the country where the effects of storm and flooding events are being successfully combatted without any issues.

“Quite literally the TDS400 story represents a long journey invariably involving planes, trains and automobiles. This latest success is wonderful news,” said CWM Managing Director, Carl Hopkins, “because it confirms once again, that civil engineering specifiers – and that includes rail engineers – are  really taking our research work and its resulting product TDS400, seriously.”

The product, which is made from UK sourced recycled plastic, not only reduces the number of workforce shifts required for drainage interventions on rail assets – the work can be carried out more safely – but the drainage engineering methods being developed by CWM, with the help of HBPW, massively impact government rail budgets with the potential to save millions of pounds.

Last year it took one of the top awards at Europe’s premier rail awards ceremony – the RailTech Europe 2021 Innovation Awards – catapulting it into the international limelight with resulting interest from civil engineering organisations across the globe.

The Permanent Way Institution (PWI), has been a cornerstone of knowledge leadership in the field of rail infrastructure engineering for more than 100 years, working closely with leading organisations, and the government, to directly impact industry competency standards in the UK.