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Little Sugar Creek Tributary Trunk Sewer to North Tryon Street Sanitary Sewer Improvements

Through progressive design-build and contract consolidation, WSP USA helped the City of Charlotte, North Carolina streamline the delivery of multiple intersecting capital projects.

 

Location

  • Charlotte, North Carolina, USA

Client

  • Charlotte Water

Project Status

  • Estimated completion: September 2019

A Growing Demand

The Center City area of Charlotte is experiencing tremendous redevelopment along the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) light rail transit corridor, which is putting a strain on local infrastructure. To meet the growing demand, Charlotte Water is advancing numerous capital improvement projects in the area aimed at increasing capacity.

Two of the three prioritized sewer capacity upgrade projects were awarded to the WSP design-build team based on our approach to streamline the coordination of their delivery. Together, the projects involve replacing existing 8- to 12-inch sewer mains, and upsizing mains between 16-inch and 30-inch, for a total of approximately 12,000 feet.

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Achieving the Greatest Efficiency

During the guaranteed maximum price (GMP) development, WSP discovered there were two other projects being planned in the project area of 16th Street: a $10 million storm drainage culvert improvement planned by the Street Storm Water Services Department, and a Charlotte Department of Transportation project to enhance pedestrian access to the CATS Light Rail. We suggested that the best approach would be to combine and construct all the projects at one time under our progressive design-build contract, thereby reducing road closures and construction impacts on the community. Though the other departments had not embraced alternative delivery, they agreed the approach provided the greatest efficiency.

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An Innovative Approach

In cooperation with the city, the WSP team expanded the GMP for the Charlotte Water work to include the two additional projects. Because of this innovative approach, our team was able to implement project delivery solutions and a smooth design/GMP development that is saving the city money and time in the schedule. All projects are successfully advancing—with completion estimated for late summer 2019—and the city is seeing the benefits of integrated delivery of the sewer, storm water and pedestrian access improvements.

Other challenges that we have overcome