On the 1st of February 2007, the Cascal Company, Bournemouth and West Hampshire Water (BWHW), acquired 100% of Pre-Heat, a well-established business supplying gas installation and maintenance services to housing associations, local authorities and private customers.

Pre-Heat is an excellent fit with Aqua Care, the property maintenance arm of BWHW, which provides gas, plumbing, drainage and water-hygiene services to thousands of BWHW’s customers.

The acquisition of Pre-Heat is a milestone in BWHW’s growth plan for its enterprise activities beyond its regulated water activities. The combined Pre-Heat and Aqua Care businesses will employ over 100 staff, mainly experienced gas engineers and plumbers, servicing the needs of tens of thousands of customers in the South of England.

For more information about Cascal or Bournemouth and West Hampshire Water please visit our websites.

The city of Ghent in Belgium has chosen Wallingford Software’s InfoNet database management solution to manage its sewer system information, after a stringent comparison process in which it was chosen in competition with four other packages on the market.

The city has purchased two copies of the solution, and has also instructed its surveyors to use InfoNet, because the solution’s data validation capabilities will allow the city to minimise the acceptance time for submitted external work, streamlining the checking procedures needed to satisfy its quality assurance scheme.

This stipulation has resulted in the Inter-municipal Association for Water and Sanitation, TMVW, buying four copies of InfoNet, and a copy of InfoWorks CS, Wallingford Software’s wastewater system solution. This will be used to help the city undertake the new baseline inventory of its entire sewerage network. A surveyor working for the city has also purchased a copy of InfoNet. Some 26,000 manholes will have to be surveyed over a two-year period as part of the inventory.

The award dates back to a decision made by the city in 2005 to create a sewer asset management system. With TMVW, the city’s ICT supplier Digipolis and consultant Hydroscan, the city drew up a list of needs and wishes and searched the market for possible solutions, shortlisting five potential suppliers including Wallingford Software.

All five companies were invited to run tests to prove that their solution would be able to fulfil the list of needs and wishes. Following this process, the city chose InfoNet as the best solution both technically and financially.

Using the tools in InfoNet, the surveyors will be able to validate the data they collect to an extremely high level, ensuring that it is consistent and accurate and ready to be accepted by the QA system.

Digipolis Gent’s GIS coordinator, Marc Leysen, explains: "We actually ran the business analysis, supported by a specialised consultancy bureau. Based on the resulting set of requirements for the information system and its supporting software environment, we then organised a selection procedure, including a live demonstration with oriented questions and specific tasks to be performed on actual data.

"Key users were obviously part of our selection committee. InfoNet came out as the most complete, powerful and reliable system and was therefore chosen for purchase for the city of Ghent."

Digipolis will also facilitate the operation of the software system ‐ hardware, license serving, training, primary software support, and integration with the city’s GIS environment.