A $ 815 million water claim facility represents several first for the Salt Lake City Public Services Department. It is the largest public works project that has ever been carried out by the city’s utility department and is the first time the DPU has used a construction risk delivery model.
The joint company of Sundt and PCL leads the design and construction of the installation of 48 million gallons a day, which will have the capacity to extend as needed in the future.
The installation is being built to fulfill the stricter regulatory requirements promulgated by the UTAH state in 2016. The change promoted the city’s managers to identify ways to reduce the levels of phosphorus in effluent downloads to comply with the regulations.
They settled in the Westbank Biological Nutrient Nutrient Elimination System used with UV disinfection. The scope of the project also includes a solid disappearance installation, a chemical power installation and a new electrical substation with four waiting generators.
On the way to a substantial completion in July 2026, the use of the CMAR project has already reduced the considerable city of cost and time savings, according to the team, and the new claim plant will reach the state of platinum in the Sustainable Infrastructure Certification Program.
The team installed wick drains to allow the water to move and the gentle soil was consolidated.
Photo courtesy of Sundt/PCL
“CMAR allowed us to be dynamic enough to be able to derive many of the inflationary costs before it really [arrived]Therefore, it is a great benefit to the department, “says Jason Brown, Deputy Director and Project Chief Engineer.
Since the creation of the project, the team has had to deal with Covid pandemic, earthquakes, and inflation and “all kinds of disruption in the world that caused us many challenges almost weekly,” says Brown.
Specific case: The original plan was to use steel batteries for soil stabilization. And steel was used in a few structures before the material prices began to climb -as a result of the scarcity of pandemic supply.
“We were going to put an obscene steel on the ground and we were finding that the prices began to climb,” says Brown.
The team thought that previously loaded the steel needed for batteries on the site. “But even then, we were receiving budgets that were only good for the next 48 hours,” says Ragan Bryce, responsible for the construction of PCL JV.
So the team, working together, turned; They decided to change the auction distribution batteries, which do not require as much steel.
The team used the batteries in two structures, “ and only material savings were only $ 1 million, ” says Bryce, who added that auction distribution batteries often take less time to set up steel, and in this case, the switch shaved two months outside the calendar.
In another case, the team improved in the initial DPU plan to maintain the existing plant in operation while the construction continued. The claim installation is being built on lands that were formerly occupied by dry concrete digestor beds to remove water from the sludge.
However, the city’s temporary drain system to replace dry beds was expensive and ineffective, according to PCL.
“CMAR allowed us to be dynamic enough to be able to derive many of the inflationary costs before it really [arrived]Therefore, it is a great benefit to the department. “”
—Jason Brown, Deputy Director, Salt Lake City DPU
The JV team later proposed installing two of the newly purchased four -acquired pieces of drainage equipment in the temporary system, which turned out to be more effective than the previous configuration.
Dpu’s Brown says that the use of value engineering and collaboration between team members has opened their eyes.
“I don’t think there was another method that we could have chosen would have achieved this project as far as it is right now,” he says.
Manny Diaz, Deputy Director of the joint company and the Regional International Water and Water Manager of Sundt, adds that the mentality between different parts that work on CMAR projects is usually different from the ones that have been seen in projects that use traditional delivery models.
“I just got out of a lot of job. And something I’ve seen here [ that’s different] It is the mentality of a single project in which everyone sinks. It is not what is best for the contractor or the designer; It is the best for the owner and the project. “”
Once the drains were installed, the team brought 2 million tons of dirt and extended it to 33 hectares. It was left there eight months to further stabilize the soil.
Photo courtesy of Sundt/PCL
Challenges of the place
Land conditions in the site were another challenge. And again, the collaboration between team members saved time and money, says Brown from DPU.
“The only thing that is consistent with our soils is that it is bad throughout the place, horrible,” he says. The soil, as in many parts of Utah, was particularly soft and could lead to the structures built on top without sufficient stabilization.
“The fantastic of these wick drains is that if you only do it previously in itself and you put the dirt in it, it could take two to four years to consolidate this weight.”
—Rgan Bryce, JV Construction Manager, PCL
The project team decided to stabilize the soil through a combination of soil seams and surcharges.
The team first drilling holes in the ground and installed more than 1,000 wick drains (prefabricated vertical drainage) to allow the water to move and thus accelerate soil consolidation.
Then about 2 million tons of dirt were placed about 30 feet high through an area of 33 hectares. The dirt sat for eight months, installing and consolidating the soil even more before it was removed.
“The fantastic of these wick drains,” says PCL’s Bryce, “if you only precede himself and put dirt, it could take two to four years to consolidate this weight.” The wick drains reduced this time to eight months, according to him.
The quality of the soil in the site is typical for Utah, according to the project team, and is likely to install -without intervention.
Image courtesy of Sundt/PCL
Focus of sustainability
Then much of the land was saved that was eliminated from the surcharge for other project uses. Some of them were also brought to other projects in the city, including a nearby motorway project.
Land recycling in this way will lead to credits for the Certification of Invision, which is a goal for the DPU and is aligned with the sustainability objectives of the mayor of Salt Lake City, Erin Mendenhall (D), according to Brown.
Mendenhall has been mayor since 2020 and has made key priorities of sustainability and adaptation of climate change.
Sustainability has been a main focus of the project from the beginning, according to Brown, said that the project team was encouraged to identify “in all components” forms of the project to make the installation more sustainable and eligible to achieve the state of platinum.
In addition to recycling the soil used to surcharge, the team crushed the concrete that was eliminated during the demolition of the original drying beds and reused it in other parts of the site. The effort created 27.00 crushed concrete.
Replacement of auction distribution batteries for the steel bar and the recycling of dirt and concrete allowed the team to avoid 98% of the waste that would otherwise have gone to a landfill, according to Brown.
Structural concrete work continues in secondary clarifiers and BNR structures. The project required more than 90,000 kilometers of concrete.
Image courtesy of Sundt/PCL
Choice of treatment process
The original wastewater treatment plant used an activated piece of filter treatment that was not designed to reduce nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. With the regulations of existing 2016, the DPU needed to identify a solution that reduced the levels of nutrients in the discharges of the effluents. In addition, the original plant was over 65 years old and went through its useful life.
As a result, DPU convened a group of local, regional and national experts to evaluate different treatment processes and identify a solution that would work. They selected the Westbank biological nutrient elimination process, which divides the flow of influential to allow nitrogen to be eliminated before anaerobic treatment begins. The process consists of a reactor with seven different areas.
Once the water is denitrified, it first passes anaerobic treatment and then followed by an aerobic process to absorb phosphorus.
“It has been shown in other climates similar to ours, and that’s why we wanted it, and removes the [nutrients] We needed to get out of the water, “says Brown.
DPU was able to get a $ 300 million WiFia loan saving about $ 100 million in the interest in the life of the loan. “It was a huge victory for the city [and] For rates payers to obtain this loan, “he adds.
The equipment is installing a biological nutrient removal process that includes anaerobic and aerobic digestion
Image courtesy of Sundt/PCL
Ending nearby
At the time of the press, the project was approximately 86% complete and 85% of the initial cost, says Sundt’s Diaz. Of the more than 90,000 concrete ceus necessary for the project, the team has approximately 500 Cu YD to complete the platforms and other auxiliary structures.
The problems continue to appear, but the team seeks to work together to address them.
“Everyone comes in. It is not the best for the contractor or the designer; it is best for the owner and the project.”
—Manny Diaz, Deputy Director of JV, Sundt
For example, with the recent climb in copper costs, the team “was able to go out in front of it”, acquiring most of the electrical cables and cables for the project before it was ready to install it, according to Díaz.
In addition, the DPU same had sometimes learned to implement a project through a CMAR approach. “It took us a while to get the right mood,” says Brown. But although DPU’s CMAR use has not been without its own learning career, it has been key to the success of the project, he adds.
With the size and complexity of the projects that continue to grow, Bryce de PCL believes that CMAR will be used more widely.
“You are trying to do a project of half a million dollars that covers three to five
