Sustainable Infrastructures: Designing for Collection Systems O&M
Sunday, October 19, 8:30 am – 4:30 pm
1 day, 0.6 CEUs
Sustainability has many meanings including the indefinite maintenance of a process or state. Sustainability refers to the longevity of the environment around us, which supports human life and human lifestyle. In recent years, the discourse on sustainability has developed momentum that is affecting the products we select, how we discard our trash and the cars we drive. Environmental sustainability has always been a paramount concern with our industry as we work to treat waste sewage, keep our air and waters clean and our population healthy. The collection system infrastructure that transports our wastes to the POTWs is a key component of environmental sustainability. For the collection system to be sustainable, they must be maintainable.
With the construction of the collection system infrastructure, utilities and their rate payers make an investment of money, personnel, materials and energy. The pipes, manholes, pump stations and force mains that make up a collection system exist within a dynamic framework in which chemical, physical, and biological forces from outside the structure and from the sewage itself work to age the infrastructure. Eventually, the system will decay to a point of failure, requiring an additional investment. However, with regular and targeted maintenance, the infrastructure system can be maintained at a healthy point for an extended period of time – in essence – it can be sustained. Sustaining the infrastructure requires regular but smaller investments by the owner and allows for the useful life of a facility to be extended.
In most communities and utilities, the management, planning and design of a collection system infrastructure is performed by one group of people while the operation and maintenance of a system is performed by a separate group. The people who will run a facility are not part of the planning and designing process and their counterparts in engineering have little or no operating experience. Therefore, collection system designs can rely too heavily on what has been done in the past and neglect critical aspects that would improve the sustainability of that system. When decisions are made about priorities or configurations based on the large capital costs of constructing the infrastructure, they are perceived to over shadow costs and benefits of operation and maintenance.
The objective of this workshop is to bridge the divide between managers/ planners/ designer and operations and maintenance. This workshop is designed to educate collection system managers, designers and planners about the real-life impacts of constructing facilities that are difficult or impossible to maintain and to provide a venue to operators to learn how peer utilities are managing with the same issues.
This is a workshop for planners and designers, both in-house and consultants, system managers and O&M managers on increasing the sustainability of infrastructure by incorporating practical O&M aspects into new construction and replacement/rehabilitation projects. This workshop focuses on educating designers about common O&M challenges and the long-term affects of designing systems that are difficult to maintain. The goals of the workshop are to have participants leave with a better understanding of the day-to-day challenges of maintaining collection system facilities and take away ideas for improving the system maintenance in future projects.
At the start of the morning, each participate will be asked to fill out a questionnaire on common problems they are managing and/or areas of interest. Questionnaires will be collected and tabulated during the presentations. Following the Q&A period, there will be 15-minutes of small table discussion using the results from the questionnaire. The goal will be get designers and managers talking to each other about O&M issues in their systems and brainstorming on ways to improve upon them. One or two ideas developed at each table will be shared with the group, with additional opportunity for brainstorming on problems, sharing successful approaches and responses from speakers.
The workshop will open with an introduction of the idea that one key to sustaining our infrastructure is to make it capable of being maintained. Facilities that are difficult or impossible to maintain may receive: less attention than required, may have a higher price tag, or, may require outside contracting. There are times when changes in design can greatly reduce the difficulties associated with operating and maintaining a system. In those times when situations are unavoidable, a long-term plan for the performance of O&M must be developed.
The morning session will focus on gravity collection systems. The first presentation will cover common design issues and their affect on O&M. The affect on O&M with lessons learned and strategies used to reduce the impact on O&M will be covered next. This will include both a discussion of the financial impact, and the operational impact. This presentation intended to educate designers on common problems and unintended consequences.
The next two presentations will be back to back on how O&M considerations were incorporated into a new design, and, into a replacement/rehabilitation project. These two case studies will highlight strategies used in the specific projects to identify what the existing O&M issues were, what O&M problems might be created, and how they were mitigated. These presentations are targeted to both designers and operators to provide some ideas on how problems have been addressed by other utilities.
The afternoon session will parallel the morning session, but focus on pump stations. A second questionnaire focusing on pressure system issues will be distributed and tabulated during the presentations. The first presentation will present common issues, such as insufficient work space, trip hazards, poor lighting, etc. and present strategies to avoid creating the problems or making living with them easier. This would include ideas such as getting the O&M staff to participate in the design process.
The next two presentations will be case studies on how O&M considerations were incorporated in a new design project and into a rehabilitation project, respectively. These two presentations will focus on the approaches used to make the facilities O&M friendly.
As with the morning session, the afternoon presentations will be followed by a 15-minute period to share problems and experiences at each table using the results from the questionnaire. Those problems and experiences would then be shared with the group to brainstorm on solutions to problems.
Chair
Tina Wolff, Malcolm Pirnie
Co-Chair
David Hofer, New Castle County, Delaware
Speakers
William Cassidy, Orange County Sanitation Districts, California
Ronald B. Czerski, Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District
James J. Paluch, Joint Meeting of Essex and Union Counties
Chuck Winsor, Orange County Sanitation Districts, California
Steve Tilson, Tilson and Associates LLC
Jennifer Lachmayr, Malcolm Pirnie
Tom Madej, Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District
William C. Carter, Jr., George Butler Associates, Inc.