Beating the Clock: Leveraging the Flexibility of Design-Build to Fast Track Pipe Delivery

In the summer of 2016, the San Antonio Water System (SAWS) entered into a contract for the delivery 50,000 acre-feet of water from a well field in Burleson County to northern Bexar County by April 2020. The project delivering this water is known as Vista Ridge. Vista Ridge consist of a well field, seven miles of raw water well collection lines, water treatment plant and high service pump station, two intermediate pump stations, and over 140 mi of 54- and 60-in. transmission main. Vista Ridge is a public private partnership (P3) design build project led by Garney Construction (Garney). To deliver water in April 2020, Garney, the design-builder, determined pipe installation must begin no later than Spring 2017. This required multiple crews to work simultaneously. The team had less than one year to design, purchase, manufacture, and deliver the first pipe to the site. Pipe production and delivery continued for 2 years. To meet the aggressive schedule and scale of this project, the design build team worked in tandem with the pipe manufacturer. Five crews working simultaneously installed over 140-mi of 24-in. through 60-in. steel and bar-wrapped pipe in 26 months. This paper presents an overview of what worked and where the team went back to the drawing board, and outlines how they met aggressive pipe design, production and delivery schedules, and remained ahead of construction crews.