Managing a Consent Decree
How Baltimore’s Unique Approach Has Led to Innovation, Efficiency, Success
Carlos Espinosa, P.E., and Amy Lambert, C.P.S.M, KCI Technologies Inc.; Wazir Qadri, Baltimore Ci — Sep 02, 2008
Municipalities
across the country are faced with aging water and wastewater infrastructure,
often dating back to the 19th century. These crumbling, undersized
and often poorly designed pipes and pumping stations cause more than just
service outages and administrative headaches. They are also a major source of
pollution in our nation’s waterways.
The
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) responded in the 1990s with a series of
lawsuits and subsequent consent decrees to force compliance with the
Clean Water Act (CWA). Faced with
implementing unprecedented assessment and improvement programs, public works
agencies across the country are experimenting with management strategies. The
City of Baltimore
is no exception and has chosen a unique approach that places staff from two
consultants in the city’s offices.
Located
near the tip of the Chesapeake Bay, Baltimore
has a population of more than 600,000 across 80 square miles. At 64,000 square
miles, the Bay is the largest estuary in the nation and is among the list of
impaired waters highlighted in the CWA. The city is a thriving seaport, a
tourist attraction and a significant source of pollution flowing into the Chesapeake.
In 2002, the EPA, the state of Maryland and the city signed a wet-weather consent decree to bring the municipality into compliance with the CWA. The settlement calls for a comprehensive, city-wide program estimated at nearly $900 million. Over 14 years, Baltimore agreed to repair and rehabilitate the existing sewer system, eliminate sewer system overflows (SSO), identify and eliminate illegal sewer connections, improve operation and maintenance programs, develop an emergency response plan, and update monitoring and reporting practices for sewer discharges. The consent decree establishes interim milestone deadlines for large-scale construction projects and comprehensive investigative studies.
The responsibility to execute this broad program lies with the city’s Utility Engineering Section (UES), a branch of the Department of Public Works, Bureau of Water and Wastewater. With the staff already dedicated full-time to routine operation and oversight of the vast water and wastewater network — three reservoirs, three water filtration plants, two wastewater treatment plants, and more than 6,000 miles of water and sanitary mains — the city lacked the in-house resources to execute the program.Taking a Different Approach
Rather than hiring an overall program manager or managing multiple consultants at different stages of the program, the UES decided to supplement its own workforce in two areas — program and technical management. “We thought this would work for us because it created an opportunity to bring expertise on site,” said Wazir Qadri, chief of the Wastewater Engineering Office. “If you hire one consultant, they might not have eight or nine people to place on site.”
The city contracted two engineering consultants — one to provide overall program management services and the other to serve as an engineering and technical manager.Both firms placed technical staff on-site at the city offices to report directly to the UES and work among the city’s staff. This approach offered several benefits, including:
- Full-time program managers and engineers dedicated exclusively to the project
- More direct, enhanced communication between the city and the program and technical management team
- In-house oversight of the work and all major decisions
- Cross-training between city and consultant staff
- Consultant staff with direct access to key departments and resources in the city government
A Management Team Comes Together
The city contracted Hunt Valley, Md.-based EA Engineering, Science and Technology Inc. to provide program management services. The company’s main task is to keep the consent decree moving forward, which entails the following activities:
- Maintaining communications between the city, the EPA and the Maryland Department of the Environment
- Assisting the city in management of the SCTs
- Tracking budgets, schedules and progress
- Developing and maintaining proper document management and communication
- Upgrading operations and maintenance procedures
- Tracking and reporting compliance to the regulators
The city assigned the responsibility of engineering oversight and technical support to Hunt Valley, Md.-based KCI Technologies Inc. Its role is to develop and implement engineering standards and protocols, and provide guidance and technical support to the SCTs. The main technical management tasks include:
- Eliminating SSOs
- Developing a comprehensive flow monitoring program
- Developing a city-wide hydraulic model
- Coordinating and managing the sewershed studies
- Developing and implementing operations and maintenance initiatives aimed at enhancing collection system performance
- Developing a data management and quality assurance program to ensure the integrity of the city-wide geographic information system (GIS)
Bringing in a tag-team of management consultants has allowed both firms to focus on their areas of expertise, according to Qadri. Each firm has staff dedicated full time to the contract, which allows them to develop proactive solutions to the myriad challenges in implementing such a comprehensive, multi-year program. Innovation and integration of off-the-shelf and customized technology have helped them tackle some of the biggest management hurdles, including communications and document control, data management, quality assurance and capital planning.
Protocols and Tracking Help Control Communications and Documentation
The Baltimore consent decree will generate thousands of digital and hard copy documents over its 14-year life cycle. To properly manage this paper trail and ensure proper communication with regulators, other city departments, community associations and all consultants, EA implemented protocols requiring that every document contain a prefix in the subject line referencing the appropriate section of the consent decree.
Using Primavera Expedition, a project control and document management application, EA’s staff logs all e-mails and other correspondences, meeting minutes, contractual information, project deliverables and administrative items. “This process has proven to be highly effective in streamlining communication and in developing and implementing a program-based information management system,” said Mike Marsjanik, P.E., EA’s director of program management. “The system also tracks regulatory correspondence and is a highly effective tool in managing multiple consultant sewershed studies.” To date, more than 5,500 documents have been entered into the system.Standardized Processes Equals Standardized Results
As with the communications protocols, UES also needed to create technical guidelines for the SCTs to follow. With more than 42,000 manholes and millions of feet of pipe across the system, standardizing the technical approach across the eight sewersheds was critical.
Working with the city staff, KCI engineers developed and compiled engineering standards, design guidelines, and operations and maintenance procedures to create the “Baltimore Sewer Evaluation Standard” manual, or BaSES, housed online using Microsoft SharePoint. This document provides a standardized methodology for the SCTs to follow so that the sewersheds can be compared apples-to-apples, and so the results can be compiled for the entire city.
Using an online application allowed the team to more effectively communicate with the SCTs, address questions and update study procedures. “Everyone’s on the same page in preparing reports,” said Qadri. “In the end, we will have a complete and consistent document.”
Managing a Mountain of Data
As the sewershed studies progress, the UES will receive an unprecedented amount information in the form of databases, geospatial data, survey files, hydraulic modeling, and closed circuit television (CCTV) video. Data collected will supplement and update the city’s mature geodatabase, which was established more than 10 years ago.
As the technical management consultant, KCI was tasked with coordinating digital submissions to ensure data integrity and quality. Using a copy of the city’s existing database, SCTs make necessary changes based on field data and submit updates on a predefined schedule. “The success of this part of the program rests on effective data management and quality assurance,” said Christopher Heyn, P.E., GISP, chief of KCI’s Technology Services Division. “We schedule enough time, usually two or three days, for quality assurance before the next data submission.”To reduce the time needed between scheduled updates, KCI developed more than 150 ArcGIS tools and routines to automate much of the quality control process. Simple domain tests check for errors and inconsistencies in data entry (e.g. RCCP vs. RCP). More complex evaluations check data against engineering and systemic rules, such as pipe sizes increase as they flow downstream.
Automated Data Analysis Helps Prioritize Projects
Data integrity is critical for future maintenance and operations programs, as well as identifying and prioritizing problem areas and developing yearly capital construction programs and budgets. Another 30 GIS routines prioritize each system component by manipulating spatial, field and historical data. Behind these tools is a comprehensive prioritization process that uses weighted values to evaluate both condition (probability of failure) and criticality (consequence of failure).Condition and criticality are broken down into a series of categories and then again into more specific factors, which are rated from 1 to 5. For example, criticality categories include quantity of flow conveyed; ease of emergency repair; and transportation, environmental and public health impacts. Factors under the environmental impact category account for proximity to forested areas, wetlands, waterways and streams. A customized routine draws a boundary around the location of a damaged pipe to determine how close it is to a nearby forest, and then assigns it a numerical criticality rating. Condition ratings, on the other hand, are entered based on field and historic data. The final automated model combines the weighted ratings to deliver a final worded rating, such as “IMMEDIATE ACTION.”
By implementing this automated condition and criticality process across the entire system, the UES is able to quickly identify and prioritize problem areas, and allot construction dollars to projects that make the biggest impact across the entire system.
“These assessments allow the city to put construction dollars where they can make the biggest impact,” said Carlos Espinosa, P.E., KCI’s deputy program manager. “Instead of focusing on a select number of projects per sewershed, we can identify the highest priority problems across the city no matter what sewershed they’re in, because they’re evaluated on an equal playing field.”
Keeping the Project Moving
All of the collected data and completed analyses support a comprehensive capital program and master schedule for the entire 14-year consent decree. Using Web-based Primavera P6, EA integrated the city’s capital project life cycle with the consent decree deadlines. The system includes all milestones as part of the settlement, internal target schedules, actual costs and forecasted expenditures.“The overall master schedule already lays out the anticipated work through 2016 based on assumptions,” Marsjanik said. “Once we get the sewershed plans, their individual proposed projects will be uploaded into the schedule.” Revenue projections, funding sources and budgeted costs are evaluated over the program’s life to assist in planning and tracking performance. The result is an enterprise system that manages compliance on multiple levels, from the overall 14-year program to individual projects to detailed tasks.
Well on Their Way
If past performance is any indication, Baltimore is on the road to success. The city’s management approach has yielded positive results and has allowed the UES to capitalize on external and internal resources. Since signing the consent decree six years ago, the city has successfully executed an aggressive $330 million capital improvement program to eliminate 58 out of 62 engineered overflow structures. The sewershed evaluations and planning contracts are well under way — on schedule and on budget.During the first six years, the city has met or exceeded every scheduled milestone. “That has been our biggest success,” said Qadri. “We’ve met all our deadlines and haven’t paid any penalties.” With eight years left, the city is well on its way to successfully fulfilling the requirements of the consent decree and is already making major strides in reducing pollution throughout the city’s waterways and the Chesapeake Bay.
Carlos Espinosa, P.E., is a Senior Project Manager in KCI’s Environmental Engineering Division and can be reached at (410) 316-7858 or cespinosa@kci.com. Amy Lambert, C.P.S.M., is Assistant Director of Corporate Communications at KCI. Contributing authors include Wazir Qadri, Chief of Baltimore City’s Wastewater Engineering Office, and Mike Marsjanik, P.E., Director of Program Management at EA Engineering, Science and Technology Inc.
