Synergies in St. Petersburg: Aging Pipes and Collaborative Solutions

St. Petersburg, located between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, is the fifth-most populous city in Florida. The City supplies over 250,000 customers with potable water. Downtown St. Petersburg is the oldest area of the City's water distribution system with a significant amount of 2- to 12-inch cast iron pipe. Faced with aging potable water mains, limited funds and increasing demands, the City desired a fresh approach to replacing this infrastructure through prioritization, planning, engineering design and construction. The City decided to utilize a progressive design-build approach to develop a prioritization list using both a Risk-Based Assessment and a Capacity Assessment Hydraulic Model. The City selected a design-build team to conduct the planning, engineering design and construction. The City recognized that using a progressive design-build approach at the planning stage of the program would utilize the strengths of each organization throughout the project. The team documented the assumptions, methodology and findings of the two models and the results have been used to identify a phased construction approach. The team has defined the number of construction phases and estimated a timeline. Over the next five years, the City is set to replace 75% of the 12-inch or larger diameter high- and very high-risk water lines in the downtown study area.

Using the St. Petersburg project as a case study, this presentation will teach attendees strategies for:

• Prioritization/Planning – how the City, designer and contractor work closely to develop a prioritization list within a capital project budget

• Engineering Design – example of how the teamwork continued with the City, designer, and contractor in order to deliver the project in phases

• Construction – how the collaboration assists residents, visitors, and other stakeholders

The City benefited from progressive design-build with reduced risk by allocating risk appropriately to the Design-Build Team, cost certainty throughout the phasing, and involvement with collaborative value engineering. Through progressive design-build, the City was able to make key design decisions with the Design-Build Team in a timely manner.