Major urban municipalities often face extraordinary challenges to deliver new or expanded wastewater treatment plants and associated infrastructure needed to support significant growth. These projects, and the planning that defines them, often focuses on augmenting existing capacity, addressing performance gaps, and taking advantage of technology advancements. Construction costs are in the hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars; implementation schedules are often phased over many years, sometimes decades.
But what about the smaller rural municipalities that are taking the first step to transition from private septic systems to a municipally-operated wastewater collection and treatment system? How can these jurisdictions deliver their needed, but appreciably more modest, wastewater solutions in a fiscally responsible way, without the larger populations to share the cost?
The North Okanagan Water Recovery Project (NOWRP) brings adjacent municipalities, Regional Municipality of North Okanagan, and Township of Spallumcheen, together to create a cohesive area-wide solution to collect and treat wastewater and to deliver the treated effluent for local irrigation. The wastewater system is intended to reduce the impact on a sensitive waterbody and support enticed development. The Preliminary Design Report documented the extensive work to develop the NOWRP concept, but also revealed a much higher estimated construction cost than budgeted…about 35% higher!
The NOWRP partners engaged a value engineering (VE) team to review the preliminary design concept to identify alternative approaches to deliver the wastewater solution needed to achieve the goals of the NOWRP at a lower initial construction cost. Maintaining or enhancing the desired functionality of the project was paramount.
This presentation highlights how an enhanced VE review approach was used to fully assess the project to meet the initial construction budget and schedule.