Producing Cleaner Water for the Future

Our team, as part of a joint venture, is serving as wastewater program managers for the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District’s , also known as Regional San, US$2.2 billion EchoWater Advanced Wastewater Treatment Program. EchoWater is among the largest public works projects in Sacramento’s history, with 20 separate construction projects and numerous construction contractors on-site through 2023. The plant upgrade program is similar to the SIWWTP project in that it is the result of a new wastewater discharge permit issued by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board that requires Regional San to upgrade their treatment facilities by 2021-2023.

Meeting the new permit requirements by 2021-2023 requires a tremendous effort in planning, coordination, and program controls. In addition, the complexity of the work requires a high level of technical knowledge for the planning, design, construction, start-up and commissioning of the new systems. To complete the treatment facilities upgrade, multiple design and construction contracts will be in progress simultaneously, and in different stages of design and construction, all while the existing treatment plant remains in operation meeting current permit requirements. The project includes biological nutrient remmoval activated sludge facilities, sidestream treatment, flow equalisation, effluent filtration, disinfection, and primary effluent pumping. The first milestone was reached in April 2021 when the biological nutrient removal facility was complete.

To help meet the regulatory-driven deadlines, Regional San established a program management office from which the joint venture team worked alongside Regional San’s staff. Services included extensive planning alternatives analysis, and then taking the planning concepts to the design level before assigning final designs to selected consultants. Through our team’s work on the program, we developed a comprehensive understanding of the construction challenges and opportunities. This understanding was created through project validations; predesigns; development of design standards collaboration with and oversight of all designers; development and updates of program and component risk registers; constructability reviews; and use of 3D Building Information Modeling to further analyse construction sequencing and interface issues. Overlapping construction contracts and the amount of spending during peak construction creates complexity, interface issues, operational impacts, and site management challenges. Our team has already provided mitigation strategies to the most critical program construction risks.