Owners Advisor, Northeast Water Purification Plant Expansion

To address the depletion of local aquifers, which has led to land subsidence, the City of Houston is working towards supplying 80 percent of their service area’s water demand using surface water by 2035.

Supplying a new source of surface water to over 2 million people while still meeting projected water demands in a growing service area required the City to develop a $1.8-billion water supply and treatment program that expands their 80-million-gallon-per-day (mgd) Northeast Water Purification Plant with an additional 320 mgd in treatment capacity. The cost of this expansion effort will be shared amongst Houston and four regional water providers who will both support and benefit from this far-reaching water program.

As the technical advisor and owner’s representative for the largest single treatment facility contract in the U.S., Carollo serves as an extension of City staff, providing oversight during construction and start-up of the facilities. Along the way, the Carollo team has provided project planning, alternative delivery analysis, procurement, conceptual design, permitting, communications, and overall project controls and management oversight. To avoid significant fines that could be imposed by the regional Subsidence Districts, this complex project must remain on an accelerated track while meeting critical milestones along the way.

To strategically pursue project objectives and foster meaningful collaboration, Carollo and the City established a Project Design and Management Center as their operational hub where the project team defines program goals, standardizes document-management procedures and reporting requirements, and streamlines decision-making processes. Carollo also developed a communal, SharePoint-based project management information system (PMIS) that tracks and monitors cost estimating, scheduling, and risk management through continuous risk identification and response efforts.

To date, Carollo has engineered process recommendations and conceptual designs for the treatment facilities, including bench- and pilot-scale testing, and prepared solicitation documents and proposal evaluation guidelines while coordinating closely with City’s legal counsel to develop the design-build agreement. Our ongoing engineering and construction support includes design reviews, value-engineering, and comprehensive construction oversight.