1-Kimley-Horn_Attachment 12 - Method of Approach.pdf

September 4, 2024 | PROPOSA L FOR

CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT/TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE TO SMALL PUBLIC DRINKING WATER SYSTEMS

Attachment 12: Method of Approach

Question 1: How would your approach for a project differ working for a very small community or utility as opposed to a medium or large city or utility?

With any community, it is important to understand their true goals of the project, the system, and the community. For smaller systems, this is even more critical because budgets and planning are limited by staffing and resources. Our role as the designer needs to also be as their consultant. We need to provide assistance beyond the design of projects and offer ideas that can help the community in a larger way. Executing these projects in a vacuum will not be the best solution for the community and could generate projects that are not the most advantageous in the long run.

We also need to be mindful of cost. Cost overruns recently are a major concern due to inflation. We need to do everything we can to keep our designs within community budgets.

Redundancy and resilience are not always present in small communities and these projects can have large impacts if not completed on time and within budget.

Question 2: What is your process when designing and permitting a drinking water treatment system? How would you approach the design & permitting of a treatment system for a small public water system?

Describe the steps that you take to select the best treatment technology.

Designing and permitting a water treatment system requires sound engineering, but also careful consideration of the utility’s needs. Simply designing the system without careful collaboration with the utility, and operators, and consideration for the future of the system will lead to costly mistakes and poor designs.

The following steps are recommended to create a smooth process:

• Water sampling – Source water quality following the new source sampling guidelines is critical as an early step to confirm the constituents of the water. This should also include hydraulic pump tests for well systems to confirm the well production.

• Master plan validation (or development of one if it does not exist) – An understanding of the real demand of the system is needed. If a master plan exists, this can be a simple validation of the system. If there is no existing information, then one should be completed to determine the demands.

• Concept development – Once the system requirements are known, a concept design can be created. This may be schematic in nature but provides the overall framework of the system. This should include an initial process flow diagram.

• Pre-application with ADEQ – Once the previous steps are completed, we would recommend discussing the project with ADEQ and the permitting agencies. Obviously, for these projects, ADEQ can be involved more frequently, but this is a critical step to ensure the expectations of the permitting agency are met during the design.

• Development of permit requirements outline – Following the meeting with ADEQ, a permitting outline should be completed to document the steps and analysis required as part of the permit.

• Work with ADEQ on a consensus of the approach – The outline should be part of a discussion with ADEQ on reaching a consensus around the design of the treatment system.

• Finalize basis of design reports – Once the requirements have been set, a basis of design report can be developed. This document is the written description of the project, a summary of the design, and a discussion of the treatment process.

• Develop construction plans – Construction plans will be developed with adequate detail for a contractor to prepare a bid. These plans can be developed with a contractor if the procurement meets an alternate delivery requirement.

• Submit permit applications – During the development of the final construction bid documents, authorization to construct (ATC) documentation can be submitted to ADEQ.

CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT/TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE TO SMALL PUBLIC DRINKING WATER SYSTEMS

Question 3: How will you ensure your proposed solution to the assigned task is practical, cost-effective, and sustainable for the small water system?

The key to achieving a practical, cost-effective, and sustainable design is coordination with the utility first and foremost.

Engineers can be guilty of designing projects without listening to the stakeholders. When this happens, practical, cost-effective, and sustainable goals are often not met.

If the stakeholder’s desires for the project are captured and communicated clearly and often, the next pressing challenge is achieving a reliable and cost-effective solution. Our network of contractors and vendors for products throughout the water industry allows us to keep up with rising costs and challenging equipment procurements. Taking these into account during design will help us develop a project that can help the communities beyond only today.

Because the Consultant does not control the cost of labor, materials, equipment, or services furnished by others, methods of determining prices, or competitive bidding or market conditions, any opinions rendered as to costs, including but not limited to opinions as to the costs of construction and materials, shall be made on the basis of its experience and represent its judgment as an experienced and qualified professional, familiar with the industry. The Consultant cannot and does not guarantee that proposals, bids, or actual costs will not vary from its opinions of cost.

Question 4: When designing a treatment system that modifies water chemistry, how do you ensure this treatment won’t cause or exacerbate other water quality problems?

We have been working with ADEQ on approaches to exactly this situation. We know that the water quality group is preparing a guidance document for corrosion control assessments that would very much help define the preferred approach to this challenge. The key to this process is evaluating water quality for the existing water and the proposed water source. The data should then be collated in a table for key parameters like pH, DO, temperature, alkalinity, silica, calcium, hardness, conductivity, chloride, etc. There are other parameters to evaluate beyond these listed and some calculations will be conducted for dissolved inorganic carbons as an example.

Once the data has been tabulated, the differences in the data should be evaluated and explained within the design report.

This should also identify areas where the change could impact the quality of the water or the condition of the infrastructure.

In some cases, a design to combat the change would be warranted, and in other cases, simply notifying the utility of a potential impact may be all that is necessary.

Questions 5: How will you ensure that project(s) stays on schedule and is(are) completed on-time as per the task order offer/award?

Kimley-Horn uses proactive management programs called “Milestones” and “Cast-aheads.” This process forecasts our workload over a weekly, monthly, and six-month period. Cast-aheads help ensure that sufficient staff is available to meet our clients’ needs. These programs allow us to manage our staff across the 8,000+ person firm and move resources to project needs when they are warranted.

If a project is not on schedule but overall deadlines can still be met – internally, we will bring more resources to the project and run designs in parallel paths. This will allow portions of the project to advance at the same time and improve the schedule.

If a project deadline is going to be missed or could possibly be missed, we will be proactive with the State and client to explain the schedule challenges and identify potential solutions. This will involve more resources internally, but most importantly, we want to proactively communicate this as a schedule delay can have ramifications beyond our work.

Kimley-Horn has a robust pool of resources which enables us to shift resources throughout the country to maintain project schedules. There are occasions when smaller subconsultants do not have the same luxuries. Kimley-Horn performs almost all engineering services in-house with our nearly 500 staff in the state. This means that if a survey subconsultant is struggling, we can add our own internal resources to assist as an example.

If a structural subconsultant has too much work, we can bring our staff into the project to augment the subconsultant. Our size is a powerful mitigation tool for schedule challenges.

CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT/TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE TO SMALL PUBLIC DRINKING WATER SYSTEMS

Question 6: Describe your company’s review process to ensure that technical documents are complete and accurate prior to submission to ADEQ. What documents can ADEQ review to verify if the review was completed? If ADEQ finds an issue, who, other than the PM, is the point of contact for resolution?

Quality control reviews are built into the project schedule. We will schedule meetings with the Kimley-Horn design team to provide schedule compliance and quality production, as well as address any challenges that may arise as quickly as possible.

We also will schedule meetings throughout the project with other relevant internal partners and advisors to provide extra layers of review.

Our reviews are documented and we typically can perform the review in Bluebeam and invite the client to also view that documented Bluebeam session.

Beyond the Project Manager, the Principal, Ray Montoya, will be a great contact for ADEQ. His role is to help the project managers, but also be the person the State can reach out to for performance checks and escalating a problem. Ray is a great resource for this and has been this resource for clients.

Question 7: Describe a time where obstacles faced during a project resulted in a change to your methodology of approach. What were the obstacles, the impact to the project and what did you do to overcome them?

With one of our major water utilities, we reached a challenge with reviews and maintaining project schedules. Due to the client’s less experienced project managers, reviews did not contain enough detail and ultimately project schedules would slip as the projects went to a final client review. We needed to adjust to improve schedules, maintain quality, and ensure that the design met the chief engineer’s requirements. We changed our approach and pivoted to providing two of our staff at the client’s offices two days a week. This allowed our staff to work in person with the client staff to move through reviews faster and more efficiently. We improved schedule and quality without impacting cost.

Scenario 1

As we have seen in our current work with ADEQ in Star Valley and Globe, this scenario is extremely real and occurs throughout the State. It is important that the design is one that does not overburden the utility managerial or financial. In the current scenario and in our current work with Star Valley and Globe, a costly treatment system that would require new operators and enhanced maintenance is the last resort.

Given the known information from the small, rural public water system listed above, Kimley-Horn has developed three alternatives that will improve the water quality for the community:

Alternative 1: Design an interconnect with the existing distribution system and a nearby well with higher-quality water.

This will require permitting to bring the private well into public water system standards, but this type of option comes with a low construction and maintenance cost with a high outcome of success. The hardest challenge for this approach is oftentimes the political negotiations of bringing multiple parties together.

Alternative 2: A new well to be drilled outside of the floodway.

The existing distribution system would then be connected to the new source of water. This would provide the community with better-quality water. However, new wells can be costly and can be time intensive. A hydrogeologic study will need to be completed to verify the production of a new well as well as the parameters of that well. We have seen this to be a fruitful option due to the impact that the floodplain and septic systems can have on the existing source. The impact of septic systems in particular can lead to higher contaminant concentrations.

Deepening wells below the impacts of these externalities is a strong option to consider.

Alternative 3: The third alternative is to ship in water to fill the elevated storage tank. Purchasing water is costly and unreliable but based on the size and use case (which would be studied further in the real scenario) this option could be viable. By purchasing water and filling a properly sized tank, the community could minimize construction costs and future maintenance and operations costs. The largest challenge here would be the recurring cost of an expensive water supply and the potential for water outages due to delivery delays.

CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT/TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE TO SMALL PUBLIC DRINKING WATER SYSTEMS

Treatment of the existing source water was also considered;

however, this alternative would not be as cost-effective or sustainable as the chosen three alternatives above. For a 20 connection community, a costly treatment system presents major upfront costs, but more importantly, could present even larger health risks if it falls out of compliance due to the operator and maintenance requirements.

Each alternative will improve the water quality; however, Alternative 1 is the most advantageous to the customer and owner. Alternative 1 provides higher quality water than the customers are currently experiencing while utilizing existing infrastructure and minimizing the cost of larger capital projects such as a treatment facility or new source water drilling.

To implement this solution, Kimley-Horn would perform the following tasks:

• Task 1: Evaluate water quality and conduct corrosion control analysis for the introduction of a new water source.

• Purpose: First, the existing water quality must be understood to begin the investigation into developing an interconnect system.

• Task 2: Evaluate the existing water system infrastructure and hydraulic data.

• Purpose: The evaluation will identify if the existing infrastructure is suitable to be utilized for the interconnect and if minimum pressures can be established.

• Task 3: Design Interconnection System

• Purpose: This will include the evaluation of other necessary infrastructure, additional water lines, meters, and possibly a pressure reducing valve.

• Task 4: Prepare Construction Drawings and Report

• Purpose: Document design decisions. Task 5: Develop Opinion of Probable Construction Costs (OPCC)

• Purpose: Show the client the expected cost of constructing the project to prepare budgets and plan for future projects.

• Task 6: Prepare Approval to Construct (ATC)

• Purpose: Proper documentation of project design with

ADEQ.

• Task 7: Construction Support

• Purpose: Answer information request from the contractor to accurately construct the designed system.

• Task 8: Prepare Approval of Construction (AOC)

• Proper documentation of project construction with

ADEQ.