The Ontario Public Works Association (OPWA) held its annual awards event on January 28 to recognize outstanding individuals, groups, and organizations representing the best in the public works profession.
R.V. Anderson Associates won two awards for water-related projects in Niagara Region and the City of Greater Sudbury.
The Dominion Road Sewage Pumping Station and Force Main project garnered an award in the “$2 million-$10 million” category. R.V. Anderson Associates provided project management, design, and engineering services to the client, Niagara Region. The $8-million project replaced the existing sewage pumping station that serves the town of Fort Erie, as well as replacing 3.5 km of force main, and 2.5 km of local roads. Challenges included a constrained site, and the need to keep the existing station operational while the new station was under construction.
R.V. Anderson Associates also captured an award for the the Sudbury Wastewater Treatment Plant upgrades in the “Environment, $10 million-$50 million” category. RVA provided project management, design, and engineering services during construction of this $11-million project for processing sewage sludge that had previously been dumped on the tailings ponds near Lively.
“Winning OPWA epitomizes RVA’s quality, innovation and value engineering approach to our projects and our clients’ needs,” says Shawn N. Scott, president of RVA. “We endeavour to provide our clients with the highest quality and value.
RVA’s design approach accommodates the existing infrastructure and saves approximately half the cost of building a new headworks facility. An added design challenge was to maintain minimum treatment throughout the head house during construction. A bypass system was not a viable option since its high cost could have negated the savings of upgrading the existing infrastructure and removing the pumping station. Instead, the design takes advantage of the current configuration’s redundant treatment streams and allows for one system to be decommissioned, isolating the screens and detritors for maintenance. The contract was awarded in May 2013 for $10.7 million.
There were a total of eight OPWA Projects of the Year. They were as follows: Industrial and Irvine Road Reconstruction, Prescott (Eastern Engineering); Glenorchy Trail Slope Stabilization, Oakville (Amec Foster Wheeler, AquaLogic Consulting, C. Portt and Associates, CSL Group, Envirolok); Bearbrook Road Slope Stabilization, Ottawa (CH2M HILL, Goldie Mohr); Spragues Road Rehabilitation, Waterloo (Applied Research Associates, Amec Foster Wheeler); Concession Street, Phases 1 and 2, Hamilton (Dillon Consulting).
