News from the Water Design-Build Council

Woodard & Curran Designs Award-Winning Water Treatment Plant for University of New Hampshire

The University of New Hampshire (UNH) owns and is responsible for operations of a water treatment plant (WTP) that serves the entire campus as well as the Town of Durham, NH. The original WTP was constructed in the early 1930s, and even though it continued to meet drinking water requirements, UNH decided to build a new facility due to the age of the equipment and structures.

In addition to providing clean water for approximately 29,500 people, the design of the new WTP needed to address several unique needs for UNH. This project was recently awarded the DBIA 2020 Silver Design-Build Project Award - Infrastructure Category.

Six-Session Package of Online Education Continues in March - It's Not Too Late to Join!

Join the WDBC for a six-session package of online education sessions designed for owners and practitioners in the water industry. Officials, managers, and engineering and O&M staff of public water/wastewater facilities who are looking to gain essential knowledge needed to procure and deliver design-build and CMAR projects should attend these classes.

If you missed the first two, you can still sign up for the package deal and join us starting in March. Or pick and choose which of the remaining sessions you'd like to attend and purchase individual tickets.

Each session will include a review of the principles and best practices of collaborative delivery as well as the topic of the day:

March 25: Contracts
April 22: Conducting the Procurement Process
May 27: Managing & Implementing Collaborative-Delivery Projects
June 24: Getting to Project Completion & Transition

All sessions will be conducted on Microsoft Teams from 10:00 - 1:30 p.m. MST (break 11:30 - 12:00 MST)

Package includes a hard copy and PDF of the 5th edition Water and Wastewater Design-Build Handbook. See registration page for single-session options.

For more information, please contact WDBC Business Operations Manager Bob Golden at 303.641.0550 or rgolden@waterdesignbuild.org.

Dispute Boards on Water/Wastewater Projects? Why Not?

By Michael C. Loulakis, Esq., FDBIA, President, Capital Project Strategies, LLC

I have always been perplexed as to why dispute boards are so rarely used on water/wastewater projects. They enjoy a long history of successful use on transportation projects – particularly tunneling projects and big-dollar design-build projects. Most transportation owners find dispute boards helpful, and it is clear that they provide the parties with a vehicle to get real-time resolution of project challenges. But it seems that water/wastewater owners and owner advisors don’t even give a thought (let alone a second thought) to considering the use of a dispute board when they put together their contracting approach for a non-tunneling project. And why haven’t design-build teams pushed owners to use them on complicated, big-dollar design-build water/wastewater projects, as their counterparts in the transportation industry have done?

Find many more blogs on our website:

East County AWP Project Update – Package 4 Request for Qualifications

The fourth package (Package 4) of the East County AWP Project is a collaborative effort between the JPA and the City of San Diego to provide the best long-term solution for the regional management of brine and centrate produced from the AWP treatment process. Package 4 will improve overall water quality in the City of San Diego’s Pure Water sewershed by installing certain facilities to convey wastewater and residuals, including rehabilitation of the East Mission Gorge Force Main to serve as a wet weather/failsafe force main, and a Regional Brine Line (RBL).

The JPA anticipates releasing a request for qualifications (RFQ) for the East County AWP Package 4 project in early March (anticipated March 5, 2021).

See the WDBC Notices page for more details and other RFQ notices.

WDBC 2020 Annual Report Released

The Water Design-Build Council's 2020 Annual Report is now available on our website.

Download a copy today and see all the highlights of 2020. Although the pandemic has kept us apart physically, we still managed to accomplish many major tasks across all four of our main committees to help bring the water industry together.

WDBC E-NEWS – March 3, 2021