“The EchoWater Project truly is the legacy project for the modern day iTwin”

Please tell us briefly about your career path and your current role at Project Controls Cubed.

Project Controls Cubed (PC³) specializes in 5D Planning, 5D Scheduling, Cost Control, and VDC. PC³ is a woman minority owned business and is located in California, United States. PC³‘s objective is to provide the best possible situational awareness during the full program life cycle including planning, design, construction, commissioning, and closeout.

Can you tell us about the EchoWater Project?

In Sacramento, California, the EchoWater Project began in 2010 when the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board issued new treatment requirements to the Regional Sanitation District (Regional San) wastewater discharge permit issued to the Sacramento Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant. The Board took that action to improve water quality and help alleviate ecological problems in the Delta. The wastewater discharge permit would require the final effluent water leaving the treatment plant to be clean, reusable water, to benefit California’s Central Valley Agriculture. Agriculture in the Central Valley plays a vital role in the state’s economy and food supply chain. It provides employment opportunities for thousands of people and contributes significantly to both the national and international markets.

“The Delta is the largest estuary in the state – its water supplies benefit most of California’s regions and economies – but its resources are strained. We know we must modernize, diversify, and secure a more sustainable water supply system to meet the state’s needs,” said California Secretary for Environmental Protection Yana Garcia. The Delta makes up about half the total river flow in the state, supplying water to more than 1 million acres of farmland and drinking water for 25 million people.

Regional San provides wastewater conveyance, treatment, and disposal services for 1.6 million people throughout the Sacramento region. It is the largest discharger to an inland water body west of the Mississippi River.

The EchoWater Project federated all the design models, schedule activities and cost into a digital twin used for over a decade

Regional San tested many possible treatment strategies to meet the new permit requirements. Once a specific strategy was selected, engineering designs were completed, and construction began. The massive upgrade consisted of 22 individual projects that together used 41,350 tons of steel and more than 225,000 cubic yards of concrete. The centerpiece of the upgrade was the Biological Nutrient Removal (BNR) Project — the heart of the new treatment process. BNR is a sprawling complex, roughly equivalent in size to 18 football fields and is responsible for removing 99 per cent of ammonia and 89 per cent of nitrogen. To complete the upgrade to tertiary treatment, the plant also now has a granular media filtration system that removes smaller particles and a larger number of bacteria and viruses from the effluent compared to secondary treatment. Additional liquid chlorine disinfection inactivates any bacteria and viruses that may remain after filtration.

The EchoWater Project had a budget of $2.1 billion, and Regional San estimated spending over $1 billion in construction contracts for new treatment facilities to meet the permit requirements by May 2023. The cost of the program would cause the ratepayers rates to triple from the rates in 2011. One of the top priorities was to control the cost and minimize the impact on the ratepayers. Regional San selected Brown & Caldwell and HDR Joint Venture for the Program Management Organization (PMO) to oversee the planning, design, construction, commissioning, and closeout. Brown & Caldwell and HDR contracted with Project Controls Cubed (PC3) to manage the program planning, scheduling, and cost control. PC3, a woman minority owned small business, specializes in providing comprehensive project controls services, including cost management, planning, scheduling, risk analysis, and performance monitoring. To maintain control and reduce costs, Regional San’s Program Manager, Vick Kyotani, and the PMO chose to provide overarching program planning and scheduling and cost control. Planning and managing the design and construction of 22 projects, many occurring simultaneously, on an active wastewater treatment complex was challenging. Project Controls Cubed recommended the use of the Synchro platform in 2014 to federate the existing facilities, all existing underground operational process piping and utilities, new underground process connections and new above-ground process treatment facilities.

Why do you think it won this year’s Bentley Systems’ YII Going Digital Award in the Water & Wastewater category?

For decades projects relied on Gantt charts, excel spreadsheets and histograms to plan construction and control costs. Projects became more and more complex with no change to the tools used to manage continually sophisticated projects. Results were plagued with cost overruns and delayed completion. The EchoWater Project changed all that, it was the first project of its time to visualize every aspect of the project. The EchoWater Project federated all the design models (at every phase of design), all the scheduled activities and all the costs into one digital twin which was used during every phase of the project for over a decade. The federated EchoWater Project allowed stakeholders to visually plan, rehearse and control cost, schedule, risk and created unprecedented situational awareness which translated into proactive instead of reactive decision-making. The EchoWater Project results were minimal disruption to the operational facility, on-time completion and $400 million under budget.

How long has your company been using Bentley’s software in water infrastructure projects, and what characteristics of their tools do you find most interesting.

PC³ has been using Bentley’s software in water infrastructure since 2012. What we find the most interesting about their tools is the iTwin because it federates all types of 3D models into a single digital construction tool that so far no one has used to its full potential, due to its sophistication and power.

The project lasted 10 years; how did the digital twin of the project evolve in that time?

The EchoWater Project in 2014 was a digital twin using Synchro Workgroup Project (SWP) deployed in the cloud using DOS commands on an Amazon Elastic Server. It was the very first version of the digital twin available and it federated 3 to 4 Designers 3D models, construction schedules and one Contractors’ construction schedule at that time. The SWP had no shared geocoordinates, no plugins, and no user fields. All versions of the SWP, the evolution of every 3d platform plugin, geocoordinates, user fields, automatching, synchronization to and from Primavera P6 and more were all implemented for the first time and tested to their maximum capacity on the EchoWater Project. Eventually, every Designers 3D models including the entire existing above and underground plant and utilities, every Designers construction schedules and Contractors construction schedules, and all construction equipment were federated into one sophisticated digital twin. This evolution gave birth to the iTwin that integrates practically everything into one federated digital twin that we know today. The EchoWater Project truly is the legacy project for the modern day iTwin. Through a decade of evolution, the EchoWater digital twin was never corrupted, and never failed. The most astonishing part of it all was the client, Regional Sanitation, drove the evolution of the digital twin. The client came up with all the greatest innovations that we see in the modern day iTwins.

Now that the construction of the EchoWater Resource Recovery Facility is complete, what are your expectations in terms of the use of digital tools during operations?

Regional Sanitation recently renamed the facility the “EchoWater Resource Recovery Facility” which is how we will refer to it now. Reliability and asset management, the EchoWater Resource Recovery Facility has requested each facility’s entire construction sequence, including commissioning and shutdowns and cutovers, to be digitally cataloged using the digital twin. The EchoWater operations staff will use the digital catalog to monitor equipment life cycles and warranties. They will rehearse the replacement of the major equipment including new shutdowns and cutovers by reviewing how the facility was originally cutover and commissioned. In addition, the $400 million in savings went on to fund the Harvest Water Project which will add to the already massive EchoWater digital twin with new pipelines and facilities.

What would be some valuable aspects of this project that you would like to incorporate into future projects undertaken by your company?

With the ever-increasing complexity of projects in modern day it’s almost impossible to succeed without the use of Bentley’s 5D iTwin

Most importantly is that it works! It worked in 2014 and it worked even better every year after that. The cost savings gained from the digital twin make the cost of Bentleys Digital Construction Platform minuscule. With the ever-increasing complexity of projects in modern day, it’s almost impossible to succeed without the use of Bentley’s 5D iTwin, therefore clients and Program Management Organizations should require the use of Bentley’s Digital Construction Platform just like it was required on the EchoWater Project.

Can you comment on the benefits of digital delivery to support environmental and sustainability goals?

Digital delivery connects stakeholders no matter where their physical location might be. Situational Awareness is readily available in the cloud and does not require a daily commute to and from the actual construction site. Using the iTwin to digitally rehearse shutdowns and cutovers prevents mistakes that can cause environmental hazards. Digital Twins reduce costs just like it did on the EchoWater Project, allowing an entirely new program to be funded at no additional cost. The Harvest Water Project is the largest recycling water project in the history of California. At no additional cost to the ratepayers, it will raise the water table by thirty-five feet over the next fifteen years. The Central Valley Agriculture Industry will have a brand-new water source that will reduce cost and increase harvest production and significantly reduce the use of groundwater. In the end, the great people of Northern and Central California will have two new environmental restoration and sustainability facilities for the price of one.