Utilizing the Progressive Design Build Delivery Model to Meet City of St. Petersburg's Consent Order Commitment for Wet Weather Flow

As one of the select winners of Bloomberg's American Cities Climate Challenge, the City of St. Petersburg, FL has committed to implementing progressive policies and programs to address environmental challenges. Due to the need to address the significant increases in wet weather events, the City has adopted the collaborative delivery process for a number of their water related resiliency projects. One critical project that was part of the FDEP consent order included the need to help balance wet weather flows between the Southwest and Northwest sanitary service areas. By choosing the Progressive Design-Build (PDB) delivery model, the City ensured a partnership with a contractor and design engineering team that would deliver a cost effective and timely solution. Additionally, the City desired minimal impacts to the surrounding community, a public outreach program and a commitment to the Envision sustainability framework. Utilizing the experience gained from previous collaborative delivery projects, the City developed a custom qualifications package to aid them in selecting a PDB team. Important criteria selection factors included innovative ideas, technical and quality construction ability, availability, and experience with the Envision framework. Instead of formal interview presentations, the City chose to hold a roundtable discussion with the shortlisted teams. This allowed the City to choose a team that had developed a thoughtful project plan and understanding, not just a pretty presentation. The selected PDB team had developed a number of innovative ideas in order to improve the schedule and minimize impact to the community. Ideas included early release of the long lead materials and equipment at the 30% design stage, accelerating the design phase to establish a guaranteed maximum price (GMP) at 60% design, and utilizing multiple crews and shifts to accelerate construction. The winning team had also proposed an alternate route for the 16,000 linear feet of force main piping. The route would not only save a considerable amount of time on the schedule, but also minimize the impact on the community by incorporating horizontal directional drilling (HDD). Utilizing this HDD method dramatically reduced open cutting thus minimizing safety issues, road disturbance, and inconveniences to the traveling public including bike lanes and bus routes. The City immediately began workshops with the chosen PDB team after the project award in early 2021. It was important to quickly establish the projects goals of meeting the schedule, obtaining a Gold level Envision certification, and effectively manage all the stakeholder's involvement. Utilizing a strategy of weekly virtual meetings, a robust public engagement program, and early materials release, the team worked together to identify project risks and establish a schedule as the design continued to evolve. The PDB project delivery approach fostered collaboration between project team members and allowed the City to be heavily engaged in pump and materials selections. It also allowed the City to provide input on their approach to diverting flows to the pump station and provide input on the overall look and features of the pump station facility. As a result, the final design addresses flexibility, capacity challenges, addresses odor/noise concerns, reduces impacts to the traveling public, and provides a for a facility that fits in with the neighborhood aesthetics. The project also anticipates achieving the sustainability and resiliency goal of Envision Gold.