Abu Dhabi is to invite bids to create a new sewerage masterplan before the end of November, MEED’s Mena Water conference has been told.

The Abu Dhabi Sewerage Services Company (ADSSC) is expecting to invite companies to bid for the contract in “the next couple of weeks,” Alan Thomson, managing director, ADSSC told the MEED conference in Abu Dhabi on 6 November.

The project will replace the current masterplan, which was created in 2006. ADSSC is planning for the new masterplan to be completed in 2014.

Thomson said that the new masterplan has been designed to take into consideration a number of changing factors in the emirate’s wastewater sector. The changing factors include flow volumes, quality of influent and progress with the Strategic Tunnel Enhancement Programme (STEP), the ambitious project currently under construction to overhaul Abu Dhabi’s sewerage system with a network of deep gravity sewers and tunnels.

The masterplan will include provisions for new sewerage capacity, which is expected to be required by 2018. Thomson said that sewage outflows for the emirate were increasing by about 10 per cent a year.