Inside award-winning projects

Let's talk trash.

The Alachua County Environment Park and Transfer Station, with its tree-lined roadway, litterless grounds and clean equipment and facilities is lauded-and "trashed"-by locals.

CH2M HILL employees provided engineering and architectural services for this unique public/commercial facility which won the 2000 Gold Award from Solid Waste Management Association of North America.

More than 50,000 local residents and 7,500 commercial truck drivers haul trash and recyclables annually to the site, which can accept up to 800 tons of refuse a day.

"I save a lot of time here," said a commercial truck driver shortly after the facility opened in December 1998. "You can get in and out in five to 10 minutes. At the old landfill, it was 15 to 20 minutes; sometimes a half an hour. And we used to get stuck."

The Excellence in Solid Waste Management Awards program recognizes and encourages the development of environmentally and economically sound solid-waste management programs. The award was based on: environmental compliance; program efficiency and effectiveness; and safety and innovation. Alachua County representatives will be presented the award at an October ceremony in Cincinnati, Ohio.

County officials wanted an efficient, clean, user-friendly facility where employees would be proud to work and local residents would welcome and value. The site, too, needed to be efficient and safe for employees and users. Notwithstanding, it had to be cost-effective.

This project was 10 years in the planning and received input from a variety of stakeholders. When it came time to move from conceptualization to design, "we held a number of workshops that included a lot of the right folks," said project manager John Maxfield/GNV.

"The county put a great deal of thought into this project prior to the start of the design," Maxfield said. "Listening to them and the users was critical to providing a design that was cost effective and met their needs."

The workshops were attended by representatives of commercial hauling companies, employees who would work at the facility and other stakeholders to discuss in great length details of the site design and building architecture.

In addition to having a recycling and yard-waste mulching area, there are a variety of design features that separates this 800-ton-per-day capacity transfer station from others around the country.

Features

• Waste management education center
• A virtually all glass scale house that serves as a communications hub has two scales for incoming and outgoing traffic
• One-way traffic flow for efficiency and safety
• Separate drop-off areas for commercial and private users
• Recycling center that accepts nine common materials
• Hazardous materials processing and storage building
• Computer-monitored scales with digital displays allow operators to monitor axle loads and track material being hauled to and from the facility
• Six ventilation fans move 31,000 cubic feet of air per minute, minimizing dust and exhaust odors inside the transfer station
• Natural lighting for main transfer station
• Truck washing facility so transfer trailers can be cleaned on-site
• Safeguards to minimize dust and the scattering of waste during loading and unloading
• Easy-to-clean transfer station and scales
• Electric powered, nonpolluting equipment (grapplers) to move waste into hoppers

Alachua a model site for new business

As older municipal and county landfills close and new sites are located further from urban areas, transfer facilities are becoming an integral link in the transportation of refuse. The Alachua facility is a showcase site that is likely to influence the design of transfer stations throughout Florida and nationally.

This is good news for Chuck Kemper/PDX, who is involved in marketing and management of the firm's work in waste management.

"This facility is a great example of the modern methods being used in processing and transferring waste materials," Kemper said. "With the transition to remote landfill disposal sites, communities are opting for ways to efficiently recycle materials. In addition to reducing life-cycle system costs, communities are now able to divert and recover more materials prior to landfilling."

Say what? Facer is an OMI project manager; has he taken pitchfork in hand and headed to America's Farmland?

Yep, sort of. Actually, he's been "pitching" hay, so to speak, for nearly 10 years.

Facer heads up an award-winning project in DeKalb County, Ga., where treated biosolids from the local wastewater facility is used to fertilize about 300 acres of Bermuda grass (hay). Harvested three to four times a year, the Pole Bridge Creek facility yields five to six tons per acre per year. And in late fall when it's too cool for an additional planting of hay, ryegrass grows emerald green at the facility while all else is blanketed in autumn colors.

Biosolids are applied to the 300-acre site five or six times a year. Only one time in the history of the Pole Bridge Creek project did the county divert biosolids to the local landfill; this was due to extreme weather conditions. With a total of 1,622 dry tons of solids applied in 1999, the cost of operating the site is approximately $147 per dry ton.

CH2M HILL provided preliminary support, management software for DeKalb project Greg Brubaker/GNV, Dan Groselle/OMI/LAW and Brad Inman/GNV provided conceptualization, design and permitting for DeKalb County in the late 1980s to apply biosolids from the county's wastewater treatment facility to a nearby 300-acre site. OMI received a 10-year contract to operate and manage the biosolid land application project known as Pole Bridge Creek. In the early 1990's, Brubaker and Groselle developed a computerized program (Biosolids Land Treatment) for managing biosolids land-application projects. A new version of this program, Cybersolids, is used at the Pole Bridge Creek and other facilities to monitor: groundwater and soil quality crop production crop nutrients application history biosolids characteristics Cybersolids compiles a wealth of information for site managers and generates operational reports as well as EPA annual reports. To learn more about Cybersolids, Contact Brubaker at gbrubake@ch2m.com.

Bermuda grass and to a lesser degree ryegrass are ideal plants for land applications of this type because both assimilate nutrients and extract nitrogen and phosphorous from biosolids. Facer and his team closely monitor the site to ensure that excessive amounts of chemicals inherent in wastewater residuals do not leave the site.

Prior to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 1993 sewage sludge rule (40 CFR Part 503) the majority of biosolids in the United States was either sent to landfills or dumped in the ocean. The rule establishes the requirements for the final use or disposal of biosolids.

Today, the process is increasingly popular as pioneer sites such as Pole Bridge Creek demonstrate significant success. In fact, OMI has similar projects in Georgia and other states, some of which provide biosolids to local farms. Fifty percent of all biosolids in the US today is applied to agricultural land.

Working like farmhands at harvest time, OMI and DeKalb County have made this project a long-term success that benefits the county and the environment. Facer and Eric Hancock, plant superintendent, meet each week to discuss updates and future goals for this environmentally beneficial project.

Facer will accept an award from the EPA during the Water Environment Federation's WEFTEC 2000 conference in Anaheim, Calif., in October. The project won second place in the beneficial-use-of-biosolids category.

"Make hay while the sun shines," Phil, and congratulations to you and your Pole Bridge Creek team!

To contact the OMI team at Pole Bridge Creek, use this link: omipol@ch2m.com.

 

"Our mission was to relocate the 131st from one location at Lambert to an irregularly shaped, less efficient space. In addition, we needed to incorporate several significant design elements into the new site while working under an accelerated schedule," Ruhl said.

But when the dust settled, Ruhl's fast-track, two-month project won an Air National Guard 2000 Design Award. "The team of architects and engineers CH2M HILL put together was superb. The team delivered an outstanding master plan under tight time constraints, which effectively uses a challenging site to our best advantage," said Wing Commander Col. David K. Edmonds for the award submittal.

Gaining consensus

A rapid two-phase approach involving user groups and the wing commander was facilitated by CH2M HILL working with subconsultant, Daniel Mann Johnson and Mendenhall (DMJM). Phase I focused on a thorough review of the airport master plan and its layout for the 131st Fighter Wing site, the current FW facilities and operations, as well as interviews with the 131st operational units; Phase II included generating design solutions and refining the design by working with key stakeholders.

Key to the success of the project was the fast-track review schedule and the electronic transfer of all documents which helped accelerate the process.

The Air National Guard wanted its new site at Lambert to be more efficient, attractive and provide increased security. Adding to the mix were other required design features, including:

• safe, adequate distances for fuel storage, liquid oxygen, and setbacks for the F-15 and a proposed hybrid mission (a potential refueler or cargo aircraft mission)
• force protection barriers to protect the site from terrorist attacks, such as car bombings
• meeting federal requirements on sustainable development.
• improving vehicular traffic flow
• locating flight-line activities close to runways and taxiways; positioning flight support services near the airport's fuel farm; juxtaposing the administrative zone near the main entrance, which provides easy access for off-site users
• positioning buildings so natural indoor lighting and energy efficiency is maximized
• reducing unwanted ambient heat on the site by increasing the amount of landscaping and minimizing the amount of paved surfaces

Since the completion of the master plan, the Air National Guard has again retained the services of CH2M HILL/DMJM. This time, the ANG is looking to evaluate the possibility of redeveloping the existing Boeing site at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. This evaluation is scheduled for completion in February of 2001.

The Parsons award is one of two doctoral-related awards granted annually by the association. The other award, by the way, is the CH2M HILL/AEESP Doctoral Dissertation Award, sponsored by the CH2M HILL Foundation since 1988.

Filipe's dissertation, "Competition Between Phosphate and Glycogen Accumulating Bacteria: Stoichiometry, Kinetics and the Effects of pH," was initially supervised by Glen Daigger, Ph.D, a CH2M HILL senior vice president and chief wastewater process engineer. Dr. Filipe and his major academic supervisor, Dr. Les Grady, Jr., of Clemson University, will be presented with this award at the Water Environment Federation's annual conference in October.

PAOs Phosphate and glycogen accumulating bacteria? What the…? In a nutshell and in lay terms, here is the thrust of Filipe's dissertation. A common method to remove phosphorus from wastewater is to use microorganisms that consume and store phosphate. These tiny bugs are called phosphorus accumulating organisms (PAOs). Dr. Filipe found through his research that under certain circumstances a microscopic bug called a glycogen accumulating organism (GAO) and the PAO compete for organic matter. The GAO, however, does not retain phosphorus. If the GAOs eat more than the PAOs, phosphorus levels will not be significantly reduced. The good doctor, though, discovered that if the pH balance is higher than 7.2, the PAOs become hungry and consume more organic matter than GAOs. Conversely, if the pH balance falls below 7.2, GAOs eat more. "Recognizing that pH plays a critical role in the competition between PAOs and GAOs will help in terms of increasing the reliability of biological phosphorus removal processes," Dr. Filipe said. As an associate consultant at CH2M Gore & Storrie, Dr. Filipe is currently working on a variety of wastewater treatment projects.

 

Last year Zuberi received the Advanced Toastmaster Gold Award, and then in July he was honored with the organizations most prestigious award, the Distinguished Toastmaster.

Toastmasters International is a major professional public speaking and leadership skill development organization with a membership of about 200,000 located in 60 countries. Toastmasters programs are aimed at empowering people to achieve their full potential by improving their communication and leadership skills, both at the personal and organizational levels.

"Effective communication of complex concepts, processes and ideas is a very integral part of my job at CHG as well as my voluntary work with the local community and educational alliance groups," Zuberi said. "The skills I gained and the training I received at Toastmasters provides me the tools I need to make winning sales and technical presentations, convey complex ideas, motivate other employees, work effectively across cultural boundaries and assume leadership roles in the organization and the community."

Zuberi has been a member of Toastmasters for about five years and has been working at the Hanford site since 1996.

The White Oak design team aimed to "humanize the high-tech environment" and create an ambiance with vibrancy, color, natural light and opportunities for worker respite from the sometimes intense pace of production environments.

IDC staffers—working with project partners through continuous communications, innovative thinking and intensive planning sessions called total immersion programming—brought the massive White Oak Semiconductor facility from concept to reality in less than one year.

From breaking ground to opening the doors for business-800,000 square feet, five buildings-the White Oak project took little more than 11 months, thanks to IDC's expertise in rapid fab construction and project management.

This eye-catching, award-winning project included numerous design, construction and logistic challenges. Moreover, it was the first project for a new, international client partnership. White Oak, located near Richmond, Va., was a joint venture between Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector and the German-based Infineon Technologies (formerly Siemens Semiconductor Group). It is now wholly owned by Infineon.

Make room on the mantel IDC's White Oak project won: 2000 International Illumination Design Award's Edwin F. Guth Memorial Award for Interior Lighting Design 1999 Top Fab Award, presented by Semiconductor International 1999 Interior Design Citation Award, cosponsored by the International Interior Design Association, the American Institute of Architecture and the American Society of Interior Designers.

It takes "proven management techniques and working on the task at hand while always having an eye to the future to keep a project of this scope on schedule" said Tom Seaborn, White Oak project manager, who is now back in the White Oak blur working on a second phase expansion project.

A rapid design and construction schedule is the way it's done when the client is investing well more than a billion dollars and is losing millions in revenue for each day the facility isn't operating.

"First it was 18 months to build a fab, then 16, 14, 12" said Harry Dinihanian/IDC, project architect and "total immersion" facilitator. "Each project seems to get a couple of months shaved off the schedule."

Given the pace and the fact that the area experienced some of the worst weather in years during construction, it's important to note that the project logged 4 million worker hours with no lost time due to injuries.

Gaining consensus and hammering out a master plan

The first step for project architect Dinihanian , Seaborn and lead designer Simon Mrkusic/IDC/PDX, was to generally define the project. And how do you do that when working with two corporate giants with diverse cultures from two countries?

You get about 40 key representatives in one room and hash out broad details. Within a few days, the three IDCers had a working master plan in hand and a defined pace for design and construction. Typically, this type of master planning take weeks.

Design elements

The White Oak facility includes a variety of design elements unique to this project and cleanroom construction, including:

• individual buildings linked together with pedestrian corridors and utility bridges
• centralized utilities to reduce cost, provide more space in individual structures and isolate the vibration-sensitive processes of microelectronics production
• the facilities cleanroom
• systems for compressed air, multiple systems for wastewater treatment, building heat, bulk gases and chemicals, and sophisticated control systems capable of maintaining very tight tolerances for temperature, humidity and contamination control

Congratulations IDC staffers, including those who are back in the blur and unable to read this newsletter, for the mantel full of awards received on the White Oak project.

Until June of this year, if you wanted to travel by car to the tiny port town of Whittier, Alaska, pop. 300, there was only one car you could take: a flatcar.

In other words, you had to load your vehicle onto an Alaska Railroad car and travel 6 miles by train, passing through the 2.5-mile Anton Anderson Tunnel to beautiful Prince William Sound and Whittier. What's more, auto access was possible only on the four days per week that the train ran from spring to fall!

Thus, for more than 50 years, rail and sea have provided the primary access to this former military port at the head of the Last Frontier's Kenai Peninsula.

That is, until 1993, when the State of Alaska began work to improve the Anton Anderson Tunnel to enable joint auto and rail use. Planning, design and construction on this $80 million, one-of-a-kind facility featured:

• "Recycled Tunnel": Reconstruction and conversion of the existing tunnel to accommodate both trains and vehicles.
• New portal buildings
• Three new bridges
• A new 500-foot tunnel
• Staging areas for vehicles waiting to use the tunnel
• A unique tunnel ventilation system that uses two types of fans never before combined on the same system

Who is Anton Anderson and why does he deserve a tunnel? Anton Anderson was the chief engineer for the project that brought rail access to Whittier. Mr. Anderson came to Alaska in 1919, where he served as the location engineer for the Matanuska Valley colonization project, engineer for the US Army Corps of Engineers, chief engineer for the Alaska Railroad, and mayor of Anchorage. The tunnel was dedicated to him in 1976 for his long service to Alaska and the Alaska Railroad. Alaska Dept. of Transportation

The upgraded tunnel and its accompanying infrastructure now handle both rail and auto traffic seven days a week in all weather. Because access is only one-way at a time, motorists queue up at staging areas on either side of the tunnel and wait their turn to travel through. The Anton Anderson Tunnel now is the longest rail and auto tunnel in North America.

Project Manager Dan Sterley/ANC said, "At Whittier, we and our teammates were committed to helping our client make wise choices that supported efficient transportation while striving to preserve natural resources and aesthetics."

Indeed the Whittier project is a study in reduced-impact planning and construction. The public agencies, consultants, and organizations coordinating the tunnel and infrastructure upgrades included numerous approaches and enhancements designed to protect the environment and reduce the impact of new road and bridges on the wild landscape. For example, single-column piers on the new bridges reduce obstructions to boaters. They also make the bridges less visible from the surrounding area. Routing of the new highway uses topography and landforms to hide them from view as much as possible. Original topsoil was reused on disturbed slopes so that indigenous plant species could reestablish themselves, and paint on each terminal building helps blend it in with surrounding rock.

Other considerations include route selection to avoid disturbing sensitive plants and salmon spawning grounds, and use of stronger, longer-lasting concrete for the road/railroad bed, reducing long-term maintenance costs.

In all, the boost in access has brought Whittier more opportunities for economic development and enhanced public safety. Whittier residents and others also expect increased recreation and tourism as more visitors come through the tunnel.

The American Road and Transportation Builders Association recognized the Whittier Access project with its 2000 Globe Award for excellence in environmental protection and mitigation. The project also won an F. W. Dodge Award in both the Outstanding Engineering Design Project and the Outstanding Heavy/Highway Project categories. As a result, it will be featured in the December edition of Northwest Construction Magazine. That edition will recognize outstanding design, construction, workmanship, and overall outstanding contributions to the construction industry by projects in the Northwest.

"Fat Chance" because when you drill a well to a depth of 755 feet that yields less than 100 gallons of water per minute, common sense would tell you that further drilling could be a risky venture.

When CH2M HILL hydrologists applied some technical know-how, however, they tapped into an underlying fractured volcanic aquifer between 785 and 1,200 feet below ground. Using advanced drilling techniques involving telescoping design, large diameter boring (31 and 22-inch) and dual-wall reverse circulation methods, a replacement well was drilled that now yields 3,000 gallons of water per minute. In addition, by completing the project ahead of a fast-track one-month schedule, the Prescott Valley Water District avoided a potentially disastrous capacity overload that would have put water users in jeopardy and heightened community fire danger.

The National Ground Water Association honored CH2M HILL with an Outstanding Projects Commendation Award for the project team's service to the water district. Key members of the project team included Ralph Costa/NJO, Luscious Taylor/SFO, Adam Hutchinson/SCO, project manager Dave Mark/SCO, and client service manager Tom McLean/PDX.