Drainage Design & Consultancy

When drainage problems keep coming back, it's rarely bad luck. It's usually a design, capacity, access, or maintenance issue, and until you understand the root cause, you'll keep paying for reactive call-outs.

ICE Drainage provides drainage design and consultancy across London and the Home Counties, supporting hospitality venues, commercial property teams, and facilities management. We help you diagnose recurring issues, plan upgrades, and design practical drainage solutions for refurbishments, new layouts, and high-demand sites.

What is drainage design and consultancy?

Drainage consultancy is the process of assessing how your drainage system is performing, identifying risks and failures, and recommending practical improvements. Depending on the site and what you need, this can include reviewing drainage layout and access points, identifying capacity constraints and pinch points, investigating repeat blockages, flooding, and odours, advising on remedial work and prioritising spend, supporting refurbishment and change-of-use projects, and planning systems that stay maintainable long-term.

For commercial sites, good drainage design isn't just about compliance, it's about keeping operations running and cutting out avoidable disruption.

When drainage consultancy makes sense

You'll typically benefit from drainage design and consultancy if you're dealing with recurring blockages in the same areas, surface water flooding or ponding in yards or car parks, foul flooding or repeated toilet or washroom back-ups, persistent odours around chambers, gullies, or internal pipework, an unknown drainage layout, which is common on older sites, refurbishments such as new kitchens, washrooms, or extensions, or a multi-site portfolio where repeat issues are driving up cost.

If you're managing hospitality sites, the cost of downtime can be higher than the cost of doing it properly the first time.

Common root causes we identify

A lot of drainage problems are symptoms of something deeper. Typical root causes include not enough access, meaning too few manholes or inspection chambers, poor gradients causing standing water and debris build-up, undersized pipework for the level of usage, silt traps and poorly benched chambers, fat, oil, and grease impacting kitchen waste lines, defective or collapsed pipework, and surface water systems that are under-capacity or poorly positioned.

Consultancy helps you move from repeated reactive work to a planned, evidence-led fix.

How we work: from investigation to a practical plan

We keep the process straightforward and focused on outcomes.

1) Site visit and initial assessment

We review the problem areas, access points, and site constraints. For FM-managed sites, we can work around permit-to-work processes and operational windows.

2) Investigation and evidence gathering

Depending on the issue, we may recommend targeted checks of manholes, inspection chambers, gullies, and catch pits, cleaning to restore capacity before assessing performance, or a CCTV drainage survey to confirm defects, restrictions, and layout.

3) Recommendations and options

We provide clear recommendations, typically covering what's causing the issue and why it keeps coming back, your options for fixing it, both short-term and long-term, a practical sequence of work to minimise disruption, and a suggested maintenance approach to stop it happening again.

4) Delivery

If you'd like us to, we can also deliver the remedial work, from targeted repairs through to upgrades and new installations.

Drainage design support for refurbishments and change of use

Drainage design becomes critical when you're changing how a building is used. We commonly support new or upgraded commercial kitchens, washroom refurbishments and increased occupancy, extensions and reconfigurations, and new surface water layouts for resurfacing projects. The aim is to make sure the drainage system matches the new demand, has adequate access, and stays maintainable.

Consultancy for facilities management teams

If you're managing multiple sites, drainage consultancy can help you reduce repeat call-outs and emergency spend, build a planned remedial programme, standardise maintenance across sites, and improve reporting and evidence for stakeholders. We can provide clear documentation to support approvals and long-term asset planning.

Why choose ICE Drainage?

• A commercial-first approach for hospitality and FM
• Coverage across London and the Home Counties
• Evidence-led recommendations, not guesswork
• Practical, maintainable solutions
• Credentials including Safe Contractor, SSSTS, and Constructionline Gold

ICE Drainage is a specialist service expansion of ICE Cleaning, a leading sewage cleaning company in the UK.

Book drainage design and consultancy

If you need help diagnosing recurring drainage issues, planning a refurbishment, or designing a maintainable drainage solution, ICE Drainage can help.

Contact ICE Drainage today, and we'll help you move from reactive fixes to a long-term plan.