Their challenge

One of the largest glass manufacturing facilities in the region was seeing unplanned failures of the existing water piping due to the overall plant and associated piping age. Changes to the plant layout over time meant that routings of the water piping from the city mains to the different buildings now sat under roadways, buildings, and other finished areas. With limited accessibility to the water lines and tie-ins, each shutdown could span from a few days to a few weeks while repairs were completed. The necessity of water supply to the individual operations meant that each failure forced a shutdown to the entire production line it was supplying.

Our solution

Our team was engaged to engineer a solution that would provide more reliable, cost-effective water supply to critical facilities. We began by developing several high-level options ranging from relining existing plant water lines to complete replacement of all facility water piping. Based on plant feedback and review of our cost estimates, the client chose a design solution that utilized new above ground redundancy lines. With this solution, even if the underground main failed, production could continue. The design specified pipe routing and tie-in points that could utilize existing structures and city meters and limit the amount of new structures required. Where existing structures could not be used, our team designed new pipe stanchions.

The results

The outcome was a redundancy line system that fed all critical facilities without requiring any new city meters and which required a minimal amount of new structures. The preliminary design package for this work contained structural, mechanical, and civil details along with a detailed cost estimate that covered all critical items at +/- 25% accuracy. The package also included a project write up highlighting what critical decisions and assumptions drove the design philosophy so that contractors would understand the intent. All work was completed in line with schedule expectations while being roughly 15% under budget on engineering costs.

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