HDR provided design and construction administration services for the $17 million expansion of the water treatment plant for the city of Billings.
A series of upgrades and expansions were necessary to provide additional capacity to meet the growing demands of the people served by this facility. The overall capacity of treated water needed to be increased to 65 million gallons per day (mgd), and new air scour and filter-to-waste capabilities were added.
At the same time, several of the buildings at the plant needed to be renovated and one was so rusted it needed to be replaced. A new structure helped increase the winter time capacity because four of the filters were located outside and could not be used in the colder months.
Not only was the existing filter building renovated, but the HDR team also came up with plans to convert the older portion of the filter building into a new operations center and a new maintenance building was added.
Some of the highlights of the filter building expansion included adding a cast-in-place concrete filter structure, a media and air scour header, filter gallery and new influent flumes, and new backwash drain flumes.
The existing filter building renovation included demolishing an existing metal building and existing filter gallery flumes, as well as replacing existing filter valves and piping and adding exterior flumes and associated piping and valving.
Conversion of the old filter building included demolishing existing filter stairs/walkways, interior walls, exterior windows, electrical switchgear and interior features. So approximately 6,500 square feet of building area could be remodeled to include new: