FICE Presents Engineering Excellence Awards

Association presented annual awards at July convention in Palm Beach

The Florida Institute of Consulting Engineers recently presented the winners of its 2006 Engineering Excellence awards competition. The winning projects and entrants were recognized at the group's annual convention, held this July at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach.

The FICE competition awarded 12 Grand Awards and three honor awards. Grand Awards are eligible to be considered in the American Council of Engineering Companies' national Engineering Excellence competition.

Water and environmental projects were prevalent among FICE's 12 Grand Award winners. Descriptions of the dozen top award winners follows.

St. Lucie County Baling and Recycling Facility

The Vero Beach office of CDM served as the environmental engineering consultant for St. Lucie County's efforts to design and construct a landfill gas-to-energy project. This venture used the gas produced by the landfill to provide energy to a neighboring citrus processing facility. The landfill gas currently accounts for between 25 and 35 percent of the processing facility's energy requirements, and is expected to reach 50 percent as the landfill expands.

City of Boca Raton, 40 MGD Membrane Softening Process Addition, Glades Road Water Treatment Plant

The city of Boca Raton hired CDM of West Palm Beach to provide engineering design and construction management for a 40 mgd membrane-softening process addition to its existing lime-softening process at the Glades Road Water Treatment Plant. Commissioned in 2005, the plant is currently the largest membrane softening facility in the world.

The objective of the project was to comply with the new, stringent disinfection by-product regulations and to improve the color of the treated water. According to FICE, the project resulted in several advancements in membrane-softening technology. The facility is the first large plant now to operate successfully with no chemical pretreatment, saving nearly $1 million annually in operating costs. The treatment plant also utilizes a new generation of low-fouling membranes specifically developed for the project, which require less cleaning and lower power costs.

advertisement

West Palm Beach Wetlands-Based Water Reclamation and Aquifer Recharge System

In 2005, the city of West Palm Beach completed construction of the CDM-designed wetlands-based water reclamation project, which consists of a 10 MGD advanced wastewater treatment facility. The project's three goals included: (1) treat secondary wastewater so as to produce a high quality for discharge to wetlands for restoration and aquifer recharge at the wetland reuse site; (2) allow flow conveyance from the wetland reuse site to the wellfield for aquifer recharge; and (3) pumping of wellfield production wells with discharge to augment the city's drinking water supply. Multiple levels of treatment and a two-year residence time for the water in the entire system, from secondary wastewater to drinking water, ensures that this first-of-its-kind sustainable indirect potable reuse system protects the health, safety and welfare of the public.

Samuel Butts Youth Archaeological Park and Recreational Trail

The Nova Road Canal watershed area in the city of Daytona Beach experienced chronic flooding that posed a health and safety risk and hindered economic development. The city and CDM of Maitland designed a multi-use stormwater facility to alleviate flooding, provide recreational activities and improve the image of the local neighborhood. The project involved the construction of two stormwater ponds, an improved outfall structure, and park amenities such as an exercise trail, elevated boardwalk and learning center. During design, an archaeological site was found at the larger pond site. A decision was made to incorporate the archaeological site into the multi-use facility and use it as a cornerstone of the learning center.

Ship Access Study, Port of Miami-Dade

CH2M Hill of Cape Canaveral was retained by the Port of Miami-Dade to assess the impacts of a container ship transiting to and from the container berths adjacent to Fisherman's Channel. The engineering study first focused on executing a series of navigation simulations replicating the Port of Miami-Dade, both with and without the proposed widening and deepening improvements. This evaluation validated the need for and configuration of the proposed improvements. The study also allowed ship-to-pier line arrangements to be optimized for safe mooring of vessels and definition of pier improvements.

Royal Park Bridge

The bridge owner, the Florida Department of Transportation, hired a consultant team led by E.C. Driver and Associates of Tampa to perform the PD&E study and prepare preliminary and final designs.

Early in the study phase, it was discovered that the existing bridge's timber pile foundations had seriously deteriorated. As a result, the bridge was closed to traffic and an emergency was declared. Traffic was moved to a temporary bridge. The state directed the design team to accelerate the project - without deviating from the key objectives or circumventing the public involvement process. Innovative program management, unique structural designs and an extensive public involvement program were implemented to achieve the project's objectives in record time. Applying a unique set of multiple construction contracts and fast-tracking planning with design, four years were cut off the overall project schedule.

LYNX Central Station

The LYNX Central Station project provided a facility for intermodal connections for regional transit and transportation systems in the Central Florida area, replaced an aging bus terminal facility in downtown Orlando and also incorporated an office tower to serve as headquarters for the Central Florida Regional Transportation Authority, or LYNX.

Earth Tech Consulting of Orlando was the program manager/construction manager for the project. The firm performed preliminary site analysis, developed potential concepts and led the effort to prepare and obtain approval of the NEPA-required environmental documentation.

Magnetic Ion Exchange System, Village of Palm Springs

The Village of Palm Springs needed alternatives to ensure that its two lime-softening water treatment plants would meet the revised federal rules for disinfection byproducts without additional modifications to the treatment process. Eckler Engineering of Coral Springs recommended the municipality incorporate a magnetic ion exchange pretreatment system into the two water treatment plants. These two magnetic ion exchange water treatment systems were the first to be constructed and become operational in the United States.

Sunpass Challenge

Kimley-Horn and Associates of West Palm Beach provided work on the "SunPass Challenge," an initiative of Gov. Jeb Bush that called for an overhaul of the Florida's Turnpike Enterprise's entire electronic toll collection system. The idea was to increase SunPass transponder use and help reduce delays at toll plazas, while improving traffic operations and safety. Kimley-Horn and three other consultants (URS Corp., Parsons Transportation Group and Volkert & Associates) provided operational improvements at 45 toll plazas throughout Central and South Florida. This required the simultaneous design and construction of 66 new dedicated SunPass lanes within an accelerated 22-month schedule.

St. George Island Bridge

Parsons Brinckerhoff Construction Services provided construction engineering and inspection services on the St. George Island Bridge project -one of the Florida Department of Transportation's first and largest design/build efforts ever undertaken at the time of bid.

The project consisted of a new 4.1-mi. bridge structure across Apalachicola Bay to St. George Island. This bridge crosses one of North America's most environmentally sensitive bays. Hundreds of oyster harvesters were concerned about the possible effects it would have on the bay and their livelihood.

S.R. 408 Widening

The Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority tasked PBS&J or Orlando as its general engineering consultant to develop concepts through a context-sensitive design to not only relieve congestion, but to do it in a manner that would be received positively by the community.

Public meetings were held during the design phase to collect input and feedback from the S.R. 408 users, community and local government. Key elements of the context-sensitive design included an aesthetic package with planter walls, soundwalls, bridge pylons, a gateway bridge feature and a community park.

Florida's ETDM Process

URS Corp. of Tampa worked in collaboration with the Florida Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration to develop a new process for planning and developing transportation projects. The purpose of this initiative was to improve the speed and efficiency of the environmental review process required by the National Environmental Protection Act.