Nexus Infrastructure has secured a £2m water infrastructure contract through its Coleman Construction & Utilities subsidiary, marking the contractor’s first major award under the water industry’s Asset Management Period 8 investment cycle. The project will be delivered for CMDP+ at St Johns in Crowborough, East Sussex.
The ten-month contract covers civil engineering works, new water infrastructure, site access arrangements and associated underground pipe and cable services. Nexus confirmed the award on 21 October, reporting that major AMP8 activity is beginning to move into delivery after an initially slower period of project commitments.
At St Johns, access works and buried pipe and cable services must be coordinated with construction of the new water infrastructure. Temporary routes for plant and deliveries can determine where excavation can proceed, while the position of existing utilities constrains the sequence of underground work. Nexus has not specified the particular treatment process or equipment that Coleman will install.
Installation of the disclosed pipework would typically involve confirming existing service locations, excavating and preparing a suitable trench, placing or joining the specified pipe, testing as required and reinstating the ground. Alignment and protection need to be checked before buried sections are covered. The contract does not identify pipe diameters, pipe materials, connection points or the operating capacity of the infrastructure.
Underground cable installation must also be coordinated with access routes and buried pipework to preserve the required separation and maintenance access. Cable ducts and protection arrangements have to match the detailed civil and electrical design. The company has not disclosed the electrical equipment involved, so an upgrade to controls capacity, pumping output or treatment performance cannot be inferred from the contract value.
Coleman has previously worked with CMDP+ on water infrastructure schemes at Lingfield, Bewl Water and Tunbridge Wells, covering wastewater and reservoir upgrades. That experience provides a continuing relationship with the delivery partnership; the company has not claimed that the Crowborough work repeats the technical specification or treatment process of those earlier projects.
The award falls within AMP8, the current five-year regulatory asset management period for England and Wales’s water sector running from April 2025 to March 2030. Water companies plan capital programmes around obligations for asset resilience, environmental performance and customer service, while delivery contractors provide civil works, mechanical and electrical systems, and specialist installation capacity.
Nexus says the water sector’s latest five-year investment period initially progressed more slowly than expected, but the St Johns award indicates that at least some planned works have reached contract stage. Before a water company releases a construction package, procurement, design development, access requirements and regulatory conditions can all affect the start of physical work. The new contract does not establish the value or timetable of any future Coleman orders.
Only the £2m value, ten-month duration, location, contracting relationship and broad civil, water, access and buried services scope have been confirmed. The construction start date, detailed schedule, relevant water company, engineering specifications and funding breakdown have not been released. Precise output or capacity improvements should therefore not be attached to the scheme at this stage.
The company operates through two principal businesses. Coleman Construction & Utilities delivers civil engineering and building work across the water, rail, highways, rivers and marine sectors. Tamdown Group, the other subsidiary, focuses on civil engineering and infrastructure services for housebuilding, particularly in south-east England. The Crowborough contract sits within Coleman’s water infrastructure activities rather than Tamdown’s housebuilding operations.
Connecting newly built works to operating water infrastructure may require temporary isolation, controlled cutovers or a sequence that keeps existing assets in use; the approach depends on the detailed site design. Neither CMDP+ nor Nexus has published an isolation or commissioning method for St Johns. The confirmed underground services and access works nevertheless establish construction interfaces that need to be resolved during the ten-month delivery period.
Levels and positions established during civil construction determine whether later pipe connections, electrical installations and maintenance routes can be delivered as designed. Misaligned ducts or insufficient access around permanent structures can force rework once other assets are installed. Coordination of the disclosed civil, pipe and cable elements is therefore a practical engineering requirement, although no individual milestones have been released.
Nexus expects the award to improve visibility of its AMP8 pipeline, but has not identified further secured contracts in connection with the St Johns decision. Coleman’s confirmed scope is to deliver the £2m package over ten months. The project’s detailed programme and any follow-on awards remain undisclosed.
