To meet mandated federal regulations for secondary treatment by December 2020, the Capital Regional District initiated an ambitious effort to plan, construct and commission new wastewater treatment facilities–the largest capital project in CRD’s history. Stantec came on board as Program Manager in 2009, and for the next five years work focused on technical planning, siting, options analysis, funding applications, business case preparation, procurement analysis and public consultation. In 2016, the project was ready to go with a strong business case, committed Federal and Provincial funding, and a solid procurement plan.

We were also engaged to provide Owner’s Engineer services and led the procurement, construction management, and commissioning phases. In collaboration with CRD team of professionals, we delivered 9 major capital projects, developed innovative cost-effective solutions and used a hybrid procurement model, completing construction in record time of just 4 years and under budget.

The procurement and delivery models included:

• McLoughlin Point Tertiary Treatment Plant: Design-Build-Finance
  
• Hartland Residuals Treatment Facility: Public Private Partnership
  
• Macaulay and Clover Pump Stations: Design-Build
  
• Arbutus Attenuation Tank: Design-Bid-Build
  
• Trent Forcemain: Design-Bid-Build
  
• Clover Forcemain: Design-Bid-Build
  
• East Coast Interceptor: Design-Bid-Build
  
• Residuals Pipeline and Pumping Stations: Design-Bid-Build
  

Innovation, project delivery and resource recovery make this project stand out. Our indicative design resulted in savings of $425 million and contributed to a more sustainable and environmentally friendly process. The project went beyond the regulated secondary treatment requirement and produces high-quality tertiary effluent suitable for reuse, while improving the quality of life of the over 300,000 residents and protecting marine ecosystems of the area, all while leaving a legacy that will serve the Capital Region for the next 100 years.

Prior to engaging Stantec, CRD had evaluated many treatment options using a distributed treatment approach with costs ranging from $1.2 billion to $2 billion. Tasked to find a more cost-effective solution, our indicative design concept focused on a single, integrated plant, and resulted in cost savings of $425 million over previously developed concepts.
Challenged by site availability and confined small sites for many of the major facilities, we focused on developing a low-footprint, high-rate treatment process during indicative design, and we were able to fit a 108 ML/d plant on a 1.5-hectare site.

The options evaluation process included triple bottom line evaluations, financial evaluations, extensive public consultation, and numerous workshops with CRD staff. We worked with the CRD to assess options using environmental, social, financial, and risk criteria. This evaluation process, along with a value for money assessment, quantitative risk allocation and risk exposure analysis, resulted in the selection of a hybrid delivery model, using several procurement and project delivery models.

Each selected procurement model was chosen to address risk transfer, schedule, local market conditions and cost. Technical innovation, effective procurement and project delivery, as well as strong project management resulted in significant cost savings and the project was delivered within 0.2% of the $775 million budget, a significant achievement for a major infrastructure project.

We successfully assisted CRD to achieve the program’s 3 key goals:

• Providing tertiary treatment to protect the environment, the McLoughlin plant exceeded the federal requirements for secondary treatment and did so before the deadline of December 31, 2020.
  
• Minimized capital and lifecycle costs and delivered the facilities for $425 million below previous design concepts.
  
• To achieve the high sustainability goals, we optimized resource recovery and minimized greenhouse gas emissions.