Orange County Sanitation District Capital Improvement Program

A 10-Year, Multibillion-Dollar Plan

Situated between Los Angeles and San Diego counties, and bordered on the north by Riverside County and to the south by the Pacific Ocean, Orange County, California, comprises 798 square miles, has 42 miles of coastline, and enjoys a population of over 3 million. The largest wastewater treatment facilities in Orange County are owned and operated by a public agency known as the Orange County Sanitation District.

OCSD provides wastewater treatment services to approximately 2.5 million people—about 80% of Orange County’s total population—within 471 square miles of central and northwest Orange County. The OCSD facilities consist of two wastewater treatment plants—one in Fountain Valley and one in Huntington Beach—plus numerous pump stations and sewer lines that crisscross its service area. Through these facilities, OCSD successfully collects, conveys, and treats 243 million gallons of wastewater generated daily in its service area before discharging the treated water into the Pacific Ocean. 

In July 2002, the OCSD Board of Directors adopted a resolution to treat all wastewater collected from its service area and discharged into the ocean in accordance with secondary treatment standards as defined by the Federal Clean Water Act under the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Adopting this resolution required OCSD to proceed immediately with planning, designing, and implementing treatment methods to meet the secondary treatment standards of 30 parts per million (ppm) of biological oxygen demand and 30 ppm of total suspended solids. In November 2002, the Board unanimously agreed that OCSD proceed with submitting the ocean discharge permit application to the EPA, Region IX; and the California Regional Water Quality Control Board, Santa Ana Region. Concurrent with the Board’s approval, OCSD embarked on a 10-year, multibillion-dollar CIP consisting of over 179 projects to be planned, designed, and constructed in order to have the necessary treatment facilities in place.

Before the board adopted the resolution, the OCSD staff were aware that outside assistance would be required to implement the aggressive CIP successfully. To this end, OCSD solicited proposals from a number of firms and in August 2002 awarded a multiyear contract to a joint venture between Parsons and CH2M HILL, with Parsons as the lead. The contract is renewable annually and provides OCSD with program and construction management support services to upgrade the two wastewater treatment plants, upgrade and/or replace regional pump stations, and refurbish/replace numerous large-diameter sewer lines that collect and transport the wastewater.

The joint venture is aptly named Integrated Program Management Consultants (IPMC) because members of the IPMC staff are collocated and integrated with OCSD staff at the two operating plants. This integration enables members of both organizations to use their collective experience in scheduling the projects, managing design consultants, conducting engineering reviews on submittals, and reporting on program/project status. It also provides a unified—and seamless—team approach with each organization learning skills from the other. As time goes on, each organization can incorporate the skills gained through this integration into their respective companies.

As IPMC moves into its third year, the CIP continues to make significant progress. The status of the CIP for the fiscal year (FY) ending on June 30, 2005, follows:

• 85 projects are underway in various stages of completion. These projects represent a constructed value of more than $2.4 billion.
• 22 projects are in construction; the constructed value exceeds $450 million.
• 28 projects are in design; the design contract exceeds $40 million.
• 18 projects were started, representing a constructed value of approximately $112 million.

In addition to these statistics, one of the major metrics used to judge the performance of the CIP is the level of actual cash flow to the target cash flow. For FY 2003–2004, the CIP achieved 98% of the target; for FY 2004–2005, 97% of the target.

In addition to working intimately with OCSD staff to continue to implement the CIP, the IPMC staff worked with OCSD staff to develop a state-of-the-art, web-based program controls system (PCS) by using off-the-shelf software. This PCS integrates OCSD’s finance and accounting information using standard scheduling software to provide the structure that manages the individual capital projects. The IPMC/OCSD team also established the systematic and rigorous methods for managing the projects using the reporting, tracking, and predicting capabilities of the PCS. Through the PCS, individual project data is assembled and organized into reports on both the project and program levels in order to provide timely cost and schedule information. Finally, the PCS provides a single location from which stakeholders can access and view all program- and project-related information.

Both the OCSD staff and IPMC management have lauded the development and versatility of the PCS, and other agencies have requested presentations in order to consider its use in their organizations. Furthermore, the experience that IPMC members are gaining at OCSD strengthens Parsons’ ability to acquire future projects.

Together, Parsons and OCSD are reaching for our shared vision of a healthier environment by effectively executing state-of-the-art wastewater processing projects that continue to protect, improve, and conserve the regional water resources of Orange County.