Municipal Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Management and the Sustainable Utility-A Performance Contracting (PC) Review

摘要

The municipal water infrastructure in the US include 54,000 community water systems (CWS), more than 15,000 wastewater treatment facilities, and 20,000 wastewater pipe systems, and the associated distribution and collection piping networks and, storage reservoirs or ponds, in the comprehensive manner. A current estimate on this water infrastructure's sustainable management, to the applicable standards and operational requirements, would cost more than a US$650-billion (or, it could be more than a trillion-US$) in the next twenty (20) years. The spending-to-need-ratio is projected to drastically decline to 26% by 2040, thus, it is an immediate necessity that the utilities need alternative way(s) of financing for and undertaking the needed improvements or this asset renewal. The energy requirements are significant from the potable water processing to wastewater processing to clean water; on an average, a 5,000 kWh per million-gallon-treated is spent. The non-revenue water at the utilities is a significant financial drain, at more than 25% per year; those non-revenue water losses must be controlled. Other local economic losses due to failed water infrastructure assets and/or interrupted water processing and supplies, are also significant at a good number of cities and towns. The design-build (DB) or design-bid-build (DBB) have been the typical way of executing water infrastructure projects; however, the other proven project delivery models are: public private partnership (PPP or P3); construction manager at risk (CMAR); or performance contracting (PC). This work is focused on the performance contracting model of qualification, development, and delivery of water infrastructure asset renewal and management. Performance contracting integrates critical and all elements of the asset renewal project development and completion, in a comprehensive manner, as follows: project qualification, preliminary review with a cash-flow; project design by the expert engineer-of-the-record-team; bid-pricing; financing supported by verified savings; project construction with no-change-order(s); one-contact-of-responsibility by the qualified provider; complete training; and, measurement and verification. Thus, this paper elucidated performance contracting delivery of water infrastructure asset renewal projects with supporting case studies.