Sioux City Waste Water Treatment Plant bringing in help for $450 million project

SIOUX CITY (KTIV) - Sioux City's Wastewater Treatment Plant services 27,000 homes and 72 industrial customers across 5 municipalities in the Sioux City metro.

Officials with the plant, along with the city, are getting plans in place for what'll be one of the city's largest capital investment projects in total, clocking in at around $450 million.

The city and officials at the Waste Water Treatment Plant are working on plans for phase 1 of the improvement project.

According to Utilities Director, Tom Pingel, "Phase one, we're looking to replace everything in the liquid stream process: new bar screens, new grip removal system, new primary clarifiers. Then we're also building a new lift station with down here, which is our final lift. Then after that, we're building new air basins," that to go along with new construction projects as well; Pingel continued, "A new blower building, we're calling that our new secondary treatment process building. It's going to have all kinds of pumps, obviously, the blowers, different valves. So it's quite the undertaking for phase one."

The majority of the new construction projects would replace equipment built in 1964, the typical lifespan of most equipment at a Waste Water Treatment Plant is 15 to 20 years.

"When we're running all this equipment at 100% all the time, and we don't have any other equipment to put on, to take equipment down, to do work on it, it's just, things are bound to break, and that's where we are," said Pingel. "Tanks are crumbling, the gas is down here is getting worse and worse. So it's time, and we're excited to see it happen."

The city is working to sign a Construction Management At-Risk, or CMR to aid in the planning and construction of the project. The CMR will assist with design plans and give cost inputs throughout the planning process.

"They can just bring in a ton of different ideas that our engineer and the city just can't do alone. bringing out these large contractors that have tons of years and years of experience of doing these large projects, they know what to expect, and hopefully they can do some value engineering to save us some money," said Pingel.

Including a CMR also greatly reduces the financial risk taken by the city. The firm selected to be the city's CMR for the project would be responsible for completing the project within a guaranteed maximum price, GMP.

Under the GMP contract, the CMR is expected to cover all costs of labor, materials, and subcontractor expenses; ensuring the project stays within the established budget.

After the GMP is established, the CMR would assume the responsibility for any costs that exceed the GMP, unless they arise from changes in scope, unforeseen conditions, or owner-directed changes.

If costs exceed the GMP due to the CMR's inefficiencies or mismanagement, those costs aren't passed on to the city.

Waste Water Treatment Plant officials hope to get a CMR approved by the city council by early December.