Alternative Bid Project 9 - Tolt Treatment Facilities

Journal staff

The Tolt Treatment Facility was funded and built using a unique design-build-operate contract between the City of Seattle and CDM Philip.

While the city still owns the facility, a contract for the design, construction and operation (a 25-year agreement) of the Tolt Treatment Facility was entered into between Seattle Public Utilities and CDM Philip in May of 1997.

CDM Philip is a company formed by Philip Utilities Management Corp., headquartered in Ontario, Canada, and Camp Dresser & McKee (CDM), headquartered in Cambridge, Mass. In its capacity as prime contractor, CDM Philip has entered into a Design-Build agreement with Dillingham Construction for the engineering, procurement, construction and start up of the Tolt facilities. CDM is serving as the design engineer for the project. Once the completed facility has passed the acceptance test and is deemed suitable for delivery of treated water CDM Philip will operate the facilities.

The contract is valued at $101 million, and will save $70 million over the original estimate of $171 million to develop the same facility utilizing a conventional design-bid-build procurement. The facility, expected to be operational in late 2000, will be a 120 million gallon-per-day filtration and ozonation plant for treatment of Seattle's Tolt River source of supply, which provides about a third of the water for Seattle residents and 26 regional wholesale customers.

The new facility will increase system reliability and flexibility by permitting continuous operation of Seattle's Tolt River source through periods of high turbidity, will allow long range conformity with anticipated regulations, and will increase system yield. Filtration will improve water quality to a level beyond what is required by existing governmental standards as well as satisfying increases in standards proposed for the future. It will also allow the reservoir to be operated in all weather conditions (currently, certain conditions render the river too muddy to be used at times) and will produce additional water supply from the Tolt reservoir.

Address: 12910 Kelly Rd., Stillwater, WA
Original contract amount: $101 million, estimated 1998 cost
Start of construction: May 1998
Expected completion date: Dec. 2000
Contractor Team: CDM Philip Joint Venture company: Camp Dresser & McKee, Philip Utilities Management Corp., and Dillingham Construction.
Owner: City of Seattle Public Utilities

Project Participants:

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