Owner Management of Design-Build Project Execution - Design-Build for Water and Wastewater Projects - page 237

Project: Nelson Flanders Water Treatment Plant
Owner: City of Longmont, Colorado
Design-Build (DB) Entity: Western Summit Constructors Inc. and Black &
Veatch
Completion Date: February 2006
Description of Project
A new 30-mgd (114-ML/d) conventional water treatment plant (WTP) was designed
and constructed for the City of Longmont, Colo. (City), through a 50/50 joint ven-
ture between Western Summit and Black & Veatch.
Infrastructure at the WTP includes a raw water forebay, flocculation/sedimen-
tation basins, deep bed anthracite and sand filters, a chemical building, an admin-
istration building, a disinfection contact basin, a backwash supply basin and pump
station, residual ponds, and a backwash return pump station.
The DB project was delivered under a progressive DB open-book approach.
During Phase 1, the selected design-builder worked collaboratively with the City
to establish the project scope and schedule. Preliminary design and market pricing
were expedited to develop the GMP within five months of notice to proceed. Dur-
ing Phase 2, the design-builder completed design, procured engineered equipment,
provided on-site construction engineering, constructed the facility, and performed
startup and commissioning. For the construction, the design-builder logged over
245,000 man-hours without an OSHA recordable incident. Phase 2 final design and
construction achieved startup of the plant within 35 months of notice to proceed.
Achieving the schedule was a primary concern due to the aging infrastructure of the
e x i s t i n g W T P.
The project was substantially finished by Sept. 30, 2005, three months ahead of
schedule, with final completion on Feb. 28, 2006. The project came in nearly $2.0
million under the City's original budget of $43,000,000. The total cost of the project
was $41,150,000, which included $940,000 for the instrumentation and control the
City furnished that was not in the original budget. The total cost equated to $1.40
per gallon for the design and construction.
One innovative aspect of this project was the procurement process, which
included proprietary meetings with all proposers that allowed the City to get to
know the potential design-builders and select the team that the City believed was the
best fit based on their qualifications. Also, the City chose to self-perform the design,
procurement, and installation of the instrumentation and control system for the proj-
ect. While this participation by an owner is not typical in DB projects and can dilute
the single-source responsibility of DB, the City was prepared to perform this work.
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