Thames Water, Britain's biggest water and sewerage firm, has awarded a contract to Black & Veatch to carry out up to £100 million of essential work to improve and maintain its sewage and water treatments plants in the Thames Valley region over the next five years.

This is the company's final "base load" contract of work to keep its water pipes, sewers and other facilities across London and the Thames Valley in good order between April 2010 and March 2015. All of these contracts have a combined potential value of £1.3billion over the period.

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Martin Baggs, Thames Water's Chief Executive, said after finalising the agreement at the company's headquarters in Reading, Berkshire: "We've challenged all our contractors to deliver the best possible value for our 13.6 million customers' money. Instead of letting lots of small contracts to multiple contractors, we're working with a select group of leading organisations to deliver the base load of our five-year investment programme.

"Our operational performance is better than ever right now - best-ever water quality, best-ever sewage works compliance and leakage down 24 per cent in the past four years. Our new approach will help us build on these standards of excellence over the next five years."

(CD/GK)