First industrial 10-gigabit network for water client

Our technology division have successfully upgraded the legacy site Ethernet network on one of the UK’s largest water treatment plants, which serves over 1.2 million customers.

The 14-year-old network, which connects almost 400 devices over 6km of fibre optic backbone, was reaching capacity and unable to meet the criteria for planned expansion projects (in terms of resilience, security, speed and capacity).

We worked closely with their client teams and various systems vendors to design a high-available, high-speed, secure and redundant solution capable of supporting network speeds of up to 10 Gb/s, running over a new single-mode fibre backbone.

The Industrial Ethernet network components selected were the first to be deployed in the UK and underwent a thorough testing process in advance of installation, at our test facilities, to fully simulate the operating environment and to demonstrate specified performance criteria, including mandated power, resilience, security and autonomy.

Due to the extent and complexity of the existing control system and the necessity to maintain existing operations at all times, our project management team worked collaboratively with the client’s operational teams to develop and implement a detailed migration plan to maintain end devices uptime during the upgrade. Based on this approach, the new network was installed in parallel with the existing network, facilitating a sequential migration to the new network without compromising any aspects of the site infrastructure.

The outcome

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The client’s Technical Support Manager extended his gratitude to our employees, Paul Plenty and Glyn Bakewell, who did a fantastic job of migrating the old network onto the new network switches and fibre.

He added:

The site ran with no issues throughout the activity, you finished ahead of programme and did an absolutely brilliant job.

The project was completed in less than 6-months and successfully completed without any unplanned downtime.