Water - Delivery Assurance Group (DAG) report: quarter 3 - 2022 to 2023

4.Overall Project Progress Water Portfolio

The Water Portfolio comprises 3 sub-portfolios: SR15 Completion; Water Quality; and Water Supply. Detail on progress within each of these can be found in Appendix A. Although the Gate 100 Acceptance milestone remains challenging, performance on the Start on Site and Financial Completion Milestones means that the Q3 overall performance in the water portfolio is within the range (Figure 5) with 252 points achieved to date; this is 29 below the central forecast of 240.

SOS

Performance on the Start on Site milestone (Figure 6) remains strong with all 3 of the sub-programmes achieving the central forecast. 66 projects have now started on site, 10 of these in Q3 2022/23.

Acceptance

8 projects achieved acceptance in Q3 delivering benefit to customers taking the total to 90 projects that have now achieved acceptance against a forecast range of 104 – 124 at time of commitment.

7 projects in the SR15 Completion sub-programme have been reforecast. 4 of these projects are now substantially complete and forecasting acceptance in Q4 with a further 1 project forecasting completion in 23/24 Q1.

Reasons for reforecasting:

• 3 projects have been reforecast due to third party issues: Yarrowfues WTW main-out, Ringford WTW and Ness WTW)
• 3 due to construction risks being realised (South Edinburgh Service Resilience , Uig WTW where additional scope was identified as necessary during construction and Wick East where there was a shortage of construction resource. 1 (Fair Isle) where the new asset is in service with some further work being undertaken to remedy faults permanently – this work is nearing conclusion

16 projects in the Water Quality sub-programme have been reforecast. 5 of these reforecast projects are now substantially complete and are forecasting acceptance in Q4 with a further 3 forecasting acceptance by Q1 next year.

Reasons for reforecasting:

• 1 (Marchbank) due to delays in starting on site
• 2 (Whitehillocks WTW and Howden WTW) due to additional scope being required to complete the projects
• 2 projects have been impacted by third party issues (Black Esk Manganese Monitors where a bat maternity roost was found adjacent to the monitor location and Tarbert WTW ).
• 10 projects have been impacted by construction risks and supply chain delays
• Kirkmichael WTW has been returned to the Plan stage to review alternative option as the operational solution identified has proven to be ineffective

The Water Supply sub-portfolio remains on track with milestone achievement within the planned range.

We continue to work to understand and learn from risks to improve the forecast and delivery of new projects. When committing to the delivery of a project we balance the likelihood of delay due to risks against setting an over cautious target with the potential to lose focus on the need to drive delivery.

Financial Completion

Performance on the Gate 110 Financial Completion milestone (Figure 8) remains strong with all 3 of the sub-portfolios being in the range (Figure 8). 96 projects have now achieved Gate 110.