Recently, new concepts for direct or pre-treatment minimised processes for the treatment of surface waters to potable water have aroused more and more interest. The requirements of such concepts are various and express the desire for high flexibility, adaptation on various water qualities and expandability of the treatment process. These requirements can be nearly ideally achieved by membrane technology. This publication presents the actual approach in research, piloting and operation of selective plants, research institutions and universities for the hybrid process coagulation/ultrafiltration (UF), or microfiltration (MF) respectively. The focus is set on the discussion of the influences of the mass freight, coagulation conditions, temperature and theoretical considerations about the coating layer build-up in dead-end and IN/OUT-mode driven MF and UF capillary membranes with a coagulation step prior to membrane filtration.