Our employees plan, design, build, and operate treatment facilities to clean wastewater for the region. Planning and building new wastewater infrastructure is complex. It can easily take a decade or more to go from identifying a project is needed, to cutting the ribbon on a newly completed facility. Each project goes through several phases of planning, design, construction, and hand-off to operations.
In June, our utility won the Industry Appreciation Award from AACE International, the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering. King County is the first public agency to win the award since its creation in 1972.
The Industry Appreciation Award is presented to organizations that have given, “exceptional support to the total cost management or cost engineering profession.” In other words, the award goes to organizations that have done good work in systematically managing costs throughout the life of a project.
AACE recognized WTD’s continued work in these areas:
- Estimating for long-range planning in public projects.
- Employing our Portfolio Management System for managing and prioritizing projects.
- Using an online dashboard to monitor and manage project information, including forecasting non-construction project costs (PRISM).
- Employing a “Basis of Estimate” number to carefully calculate the total cost of a project.
- Developing a tool for capturing and modeling staff labor on projects.
- Process to identify what projects are needed and their feasibility (analysis that considers all of a project’s relevant factors—including economic, technical, legal, and scheduling considerations—to ascertain the likelihood of completing the project successfully).
This award recognizes our on-going commitment to delivering quality projects while managing costs so that our region and our ratepayers get the best benefits. Our sincere thanks to the smart, hardworking staff who made this possible!