Scottish Water is to adopt an award-winning partnership model to deliver up to £9 billion worth of capital investment.

The publicly owned utility's £500 million "Improving Urban Waters" programme was recently named 'Partnership of the Year' at the Water Industry Awards for its innovative and integrated approach.

Now, Scottish Water is set to use the same model to deliver its largest ever procurement process, known as "Delivery Vehicle 4," which will run from 2027 to 2033 and potentially for a further six years. It is anticipated that the total investment, known as SR27, will be between £5bn and £9bn. This is expected to support around 4,000 jobs and create opportunities for 1,500 young people.

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Scottish Water Alliance Manager Lynsey Lennon said: "Our Improving Urban Waters programme committed us to delivering over 100 projects in less than five years. We decided to take a combined approach, bringing together our team members with our alliance partner, modellers, designers and survey partners into one integrated team. The result is we are getting projects to site in a third of the time that it took in the past, and that achievement has been recognised."

Ms Lennon added that the new investment period will see much more of this way of working. "Innovation is key, not only in the technologies and materials we use, but in our approach to how we bring together the expertise, know-how and processes to deliver real benefits," she said.

The Improving Urban Waters team includes the Caledonia Water Alliance, modellers and designers at M2 and ARC, and survey partner Clancy.