WES Ltd are excited to announce the purchase of an additional new facility. Directly next door to the existing WES facility, the 2 units combined will nearly triple our existing capacity providing 28,000 Sq/Ft of workshop & office facility within a 2 acre site.

Managing Director Kevin Wheeler said: “WES Ltd have ambitious growth plans, investment in this additional new facility combined with the significant additional capabilities of our parent company RSE Group, means we’re fully prepared to support our customers in meeting the expected demand in chemical dosing systems and services in the coming years”.

Love it or ditch it?

Let’s face facts, when equipment breaks down, the primary concern is how will productivity and profitability be impacted in both the short and long term? Not to mention the general public’s water supply being disrupted if there is downtime at the water and wastewater works.

When breakdowns occur, we go back to the age-old question of repair or replace? It is a decision that requires careful consideration in order to maintain productivity and manage costs. Corporations have long used the 50 per cent rule as a guide: if breakdowns and repairs exceed 50 per cent of the total cost of replacing equipment, then you should replace it outright.

However, in a world where repair and remanufacture promotes a circular economy and is the more sustainable option, the regular servicing and maintaining of equipment mean that those old 50 / 50 guidelines are shifting.

Systems must be maintained regularly
Reliable and efficient chemical dosing systems, for example, are vital to the regulatory compliance, safe management and cost-effectiveness of water and wastewater treatment operations. To avoid equipment failures and minimise leaks, spills and blockages, these systems must be properly and regularly maintained. However, as we’ve seen over recent years, many companies are falling short of this.

In fact, when the Environment Agency released its latest annual report on the environmental performance of England’s water and sewerage companies, it showed that four out of nine companies are falling short of expected standards, which is having a detrimental impact on the environment. Ultimately, if you are not maintaining your equipment regularly you will have no choice but to replace it and perhaps face other consequences. Not making maintenance your priority has other repercussions too:

Shortened asset life
Poorly maintained dosing equipment simply won’t last as long and a replacement will mean adding to the company’s capital expenditure (CAPEX). Most other savings achieved through maintenance relate to operating expenditure (OPEX). Considered holistically, the benefits of good servicing can be combined to enable effective planning and optimisation of total expenditure (TOTEX).

Inefficiency
Without regular servicing and recalibration where necessary, a dosing system can end up injecting larger quantities of chemical than needed. Energy consumption may also increase when equipment isn’t functioning at full efficacy.

Environmental harm
If the doses from a failing system are too low, insufficiently treated wastewater may be discharged into the environment. If doses are too high, the discharge may be toxic. In the event of a significant chemical leakage or untreated discharge due to faulty equipment, the effects on rivers, streams and other habitats may be devastating. Along with the cost of fines, enforcement undertakings and remedial works, the company will be facing a PR disaster.

Breakdown? Have you considered hiring a chemical dosing system?
Other maintenance-related services from WES include replacing components, upgrading or re-purposing systems, relocating equipment, modifying controls and training operators.

As an alternative to replacement, we can also support operations through various other solutions. This includes the rapid delivery of hired dosing systems in emergency situations, or where planned shutdowns are scheduled.
In short, whatever a business needs to keep its chemical dosing systems well maintained, we have alternatives so that the fallback doesn’t have to be replace.

How can WES help?
Specific maintenance needs vary between sites, applications and the nature of existing equipment. We offer a free on-site survey to audit the chemical dosing system regardless of age or manufacturer, against current standards and best practice. An assessment of the equipment’s general condition is produced, along with recommendations on any repair or upgrade work needed. Based on those reports, WES will make a recommendation.

WES are delighted to announce the successful completion of a 2-stage assessment to become an accredited supplier on Hellios Information’s JOSCAR approval register.

JOSCAR (the Joint Supply Chain Accreditation Register) is a collaborative tool used by the aerospace, defence and security industry to act as a single repository for pre-qualification and compliance information.

This demonstrates WES’ continuing support to the defence sector, as well as commitment to quality assurance.

Achilles UVDB Verify is an independent audit of an organisation’s Safety, Health, Environment, Quality (SHEQ) management systems and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). We are thrilled to announce our 100% score in all categories following our recent audit – this was for both our management systems and our on-site operations.

This is a demonstration of our continuing commitment to striving for excellence in our industry. Well done to all our employees at WES for their valued contribution.

ACHILLES UVDB VERIFY AUDIT DECLARATION

AMALGAMATED SCORES	MSE Percentage Score	Site Percentage Score
Health & Safety	100%	100%
Environment	100%	100%
Quality	100%	100%
CSR	100%	100%

Leonardo da Vinci, the world-renowned artist and engineer, said ‘wisdom is the daughter of experience’. So, with this in mind, here is some food for thought for those looking to overcome those all too frequent specification and installation pain points, based on the WES team’s extensive experience in this field:

Location, location, location  – with more stringent requirements for the removal of phosphorus under AMP7, there has been an increase in demand for chemical dosing systems on smaller, trickier sites. To overcome the pain point of a difficult location or small footprint, many compact packaged dosing systems are increasingly popular. This is because:

• Compact dosing systems have an immediate flexibility advantage over their large predecessors, as they give wider scope for location choice, fitting easily into smaller sites
• Systems like the DS1500 from WES come with inbuilt weather protection, expanding applicability to both outdoor and indoor locations
• Self-contained small and large chemical dosing systems, such as those supplied by WES, are single lift packages that are flexible enough to meet all control requirements and other product standards relating to different water utilities and approved suppliers.

Keeping the costs down – the best way to keep costs down is to minimise any nasty surprises. This is where standardisation, experience and simplicity can make all the difference:

• Using framework designs that are agreed upon by the supply chain can help a standardised cost to be achieved by a delivery provider
• Experience can also help simplify the specification and reduce costs. The team at WES has been able to halve costs for some customers as they have used their skills and knowledge to provide a better design. For example WES delivered cheaper costs on a project by looking at a different way of achieving the end result, coming up with a 5m² system compared to the original 3.5m x 7.5m solution.

Speeding up delivery times – time is money and mistakes can be costly in terms of service quality, expense and speed. To ensure the job is delivered as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible:

• What checking process does the supplier have in place to minimise errors? At WES even the most straightforward jobs are peer reviewed by others, to make sure that no one has made a mistake that will lead to delivery delays or additional costs
• Getting to the root of the problem not only saves time but money. A good supplier will ask questions and ideally check the site, so that the problem is understood and the right solution specified.

None of the suggestions listed here are rocket science. They are just based on the WES team’s years of experience in delivering the right chemical dosing system, in the right time frame and at the right price.

For more information on how WES can help you achieve the best chemical dosing system to meet your needs – painlessly – please contact us

WES has successfully gained Cyber Essentials Certification for its IT systems and practices. Cyber Essentials is a government backed scheme and confirms our commitment to security of our data and protection against the most common cyber threats.

Basingstoke headquartered chemical dosing specialists WES Ltd today announced an equity investment by leading Scottish engineering group, RSE. Directors Kevin Wheeler and Bob Cook will remain with the business and look to realise the benefits of becoming part of a larger group with complementary skillsets.

WES Managing Director Kevin Wheeler welcomed the partnership as a timely support to WES’s growth ambitions. “Since forming WES 25 years ago, we have achieved sustained year-on-year growth. We are looking forward to continuing this journey with greater capacity and technical support from our new colleagues at RSE. As our customers seek out cost-effective and carbon-reducing solutions to their projects, we feel confident the products and innovations developed by RSE will only strengthen our offering to the market.”

RSE is an engineering group that specialises in Water Treatment & Clean Energy Solutions. Its 800+ staff – spread across ten locations – are skilled in the design, engineering and delivery of MEICA projects and services (MEICA: Mechanical, Electrical, Instrumentation, Controls & Automation). Like WES, RSE design and build chemical dosing systems as part of its offsite manufacturing offer to the UK water industry.

All of WES’s 50 staff are based in Basingstoke, Hampshire.

RSE Managing Director, Allan Dallas, commented:

“We are delighted to welcome WES into the RSE group of businesses. We have been successful in the past year exporting our award-winning water treatment systems into the English market, with demand growing faster than we first expected. Our interest in acquiring WES is to extend the reach of our existing chemical dosing offering, and we are pleased to now have a highly capable engineering team based in the South.”

“WES have been innovative in developing products over the past years, and we believe these will complement our own products. Water companies have expressed an interest in our offsite manufacturing solutions in recent months, especially to address environmental challenges such as the removal of phosphorous from UK water supplies. We hope that customers will welcome this acquisition so that we can enhance the capacity of WES – who are market leaders in the southern geographies.”

Further to our previous update, we can confirm that WES has begun a phased and managed return to optimum capacity.

We have fully reviewed our facilities and working practices in line with the working guidelines published by the government and can confirm we are “Covid-secure” in this respect.

The following provides a summary of the current service levels across our activities/departments:

Head office

Working effectively with employees distributed between home & office working allowing good social distancing practice to prevail.  All desk-based employees observe strict new guidelines including a one-way system around the office, personal WES made hand sanitiser, regular surface disinfection, etc. Contact with individuals can be made as normal via the usual telephone and email routes. All home-based employees have video conferencing facilities via “Microsoft teams”.

Sales & Proposals

Operating as normal albeit home working.

Engineering & contracts

Operating as normal – partly home, partly office working.

Workshop & manufacture

Workshop activities have returned with about 50% of the previous resource level to allow safe distancing. Further increases in resources over the next few weeks are likely to be with varying shift working patterns to maintain working space.

Site activities

Working back near full capacity with strict working guidelines with each employee carrying a minimum coronavirus safety kit.

The company will continue to monitor the situation as circumstances evolve.  Further information will be provided & the Company is greatly appreciative of your understanding during this unprecedented period.

When it comes to chemical dosing systems, more and more water and wastewater businesses are using the option of hired in services. In these difficult times, choosing a provider that can meet even unexpected demands, quickly, is essential.

The reasons businesses choose to hire chemical dosing systems are many and varied and include the need to:

• Solve an emergency – when equipment suddenly stops working, a hired system keeps things going, giving time to identify the cause and carry out repairs
• Support planned maintenance – when the original dosing system undergoes a planned shutdown for maintenance, refurbishment, upgrading or expansion, a hired solution can keep things moving
• Test and evaluate new treatment strategies and processes – to meet more stringent regulations and reduce operating costs, hire systems enable the completion of tests and field trials to choose the best way forward
• Meet changing needs – demand or treatment requirements are subject to changes and a hired system gives the flexibility to adapt site capabilities rapidly and cost-effectively
• Overcome budget challenges – dosing equipment hire is a relatively low monthly payment on the operating expenditure budget
• Bring in external expertise – as specialists in their field, the chemical dosing equipment provider brings knowledge, skills, and capacity to install and maintain dosing equipment.

Although most water and wastewater businesses invest in their own chemical dosing equipment, as can be seen from the list above, there are times when hired systems become a welcome problem-solving option.

Bigger, in this case, is better

Due to the fact that WES Ltd has the biggest fleet of chemical dosing units for hire in the UK – with 350 individual assets – the company is well-used to meeting customer hire needs quickly and effectively. This response speed is especially important in the event of expected breakdowns or emergencies.

WES – a helping hand in an emergency

The team of experts at WES understands the potential damage a dosing system breakdown can have, particularly for wastewater treatment plants, where a failure can potentially lead to environmental damage and significant fines. WES has the ability to deliver a pre-configured system – often within the same day a hire-call is received – that can be installed and operating within hours, ensuring critical processes continue to function.

So, in these times where so many things are proving difficult to get hold of, WES is ready and able to meet any chemical dosing system need you have – be that planned or an emergency.

For further information on WES’ hiring service, click here

During these challenging times, WES Ltd, has been doing its bit to help support local charities by manufacturing and delivering hand sanitiser to them. The first batch was delivered to Basingstoke Voluntary Action this week and has been well received by the staff there.

Focused on developing and supporting the voluntary sector in and around the borough of Basingstoke and Deane, Basingstoke Voluntary Action will be using the hand sanitiser in its vital work to help support vulnerable residents across the district.   

Producing hand sanitiser to help support local charities was the brainchild of WES’ managing director, Kevin Wheeler. Despite WES still continuing to provide industries across the country with essential dosing equipment at this time, Kevin rolled up his sleeves, and devised a plan to adapt existing skills and equipment to manufacture and bottle hand sanitiser. He comments: “During this time, it is important that we all do what we can to help fight this disease. The hand sanitiser idea came about because chemical handling and metering accurate quantities is what we do and so it seemed obvious to use the skills we have across departments to produce something we were unable to purchase. Initially, it was intended for our own key worker employees, but we quickly realised that we could share it out to other deserving causes. It has been well received by the team at Basingstoke Voluntary Action and we are aiming to deliver more in the coming weeks”