Miami Beach Receives Engineering Project and Engineer of the Year
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City of Miami Beach, 1700 Convention Center Drive, Miami Beach, FL 33139, www.miamibeachfl.gov
OFFICE OF MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS, Tel: 305.673.7575 PRESS RELEASE
Tonya Daniels, E-mail: tonyadaniels@miamibeachfl.gov
Melissa Berthier, E-mail: melissaberthier@miamibeachfl.gov
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 27, 2017
Miami Beach Receives Engineering Project and Engineer of the Year Awards
— From the Cuban American Association of Civil Engineers —
Miami Beach, FL – The City of Miami Beach has successfully completed the horizontal
directional drilling (HDD) of a 54-inch raw sewage force main, providing the city’s wastewater
collection system redundant access to the Miami-Dade County Central District Wastewater
Treatment Plant. The project was completed in two pulls totaling 4,200 linear feet and is the
largest diameter HDD constructed in North America.
Recognizing this extraordinary accomplishment, the Cuban American Association of Civil
Engineers (CAACE) has chosen this project to receive their prestigious Project of the Year
Award. Additionally, Miami Beach City Engineer Bruce Mowry who played an integral role in
the project’s development and construction is the recipient of the CAACE Luis P. Saenz
(Engineer of the Year) Award.
With world renowned beaches and vibrant neighborhoods, the infrastructure that services
Miami Beach residents and visitors is of vital importance. One particularly invaluable piece of
infrastructure is the city’s principal sewage force main, which serves as the primary means for
the disposal of all wastewater within the city.
The city was well aware of the criticality of the existing 54-inch sewage force main and
commissioned Pure Technologies to assess the condition of the pipeline. After deploying a
proprietary device able to detect deficiencies within the force main, Pure determined that the
pipe was structurally deficient and could potentially fail at any moment. Knowing that
operational resiliency is of paramount importance in a well-planned municipality and armed
with the inspection results of the force main evaluation, the city embarked on the formidable
task of constructing a new 54-inch redundant force main. While the completion of the new force
main prior to a catastrophic failure of the aging existing force main was a primary concern, city
staff also needed to mitigate the construction impact to the adjacent project stakeholders.
The city contracted the services of engineering design firm AECOM to create a preliminary
design of the proposed force main, commonly referred to as a design criteria package (DCP).
Once the DCP was finalized, the city procured the project as a design build job using the
services of the construction firm David Mancini and Sons, Inc., the engineering design firm
A&P Consulting and Transportation Engineers (APCTE), and AECOM for the construction
inspection services.
We are committed to providing excellent public service and safety to all who live, work and play in our vibrant, tropical, historic community.
The design build process is often used by the city in many of its construction contracts to
provide flexibility in design, innovative solutions, risk mitigation, and reduced construction
costs. Although the original DCP specified a micro-tunnel approach, the project team evaluated
all available options and concluded that the best alternative was to use HDD to install the pipe.
As Bruce Mowry noted regarding the project’s construction methods: “the bottom line was to
manage risk and make it operational with minimal impact to the community.” The HDD
construction methodology and the base bid option of tunnels and shafts, by only requiring
excavations in limited areas as opposed to an almost mile long trenching operation, did just
that. When speaking of the construction approach, Mowry made reference to a key risk
mitigation strategy, specifically performing the HDD in two pulls. “We wanted to be innovative,
but not risk failure. The project could have been done in one pull, but at what risk? Why be that
aggressive? We brought in specialized equipment capable of handling the pulling forces and
paid close attention to the hydraulic fluids integral to the process. We effectively managed risk
by completing the project in two pulls.”
The right balance of managed risk and innovation was crucial in the completion of a largely
successful project for the city and the entire South Florida community. A newly installed force
main will play an instrumental role in the city’s future growth and prosperity by preventing the
outfall of raw sewage to the nearby ocean, which would create a catastrophic effect on the
city’s tourist based economy.
The 54-inch HDD redundant sewage force main, while just one of the many impressive projects
in the city’s capital improvements program, clearly illustrates that the Miami Beach public works
department is not a run of the mill municipal engineering and construction operation. The team
works proactively on solving big picture problems such as sea level rise and infrastructure
resiliency. A typical day at their office involves the use of highly advanced technologies such as
the combination of Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) and hydraulic modeling software to
develop effective plans to combat sea level rise, one of the city’s primary concerns.
“The public works department continues to look for additional ways to improve the city’s
infrastructure,” added Mowry. “We can be here one hundred years from today if we start
planning now and build a foundation on which to work from. The idea is to phase in the
improvements, but it cannot be done in one day.”
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