The Ontario Construction Report – March 2011 – PAGE OCR B7


Successful water and sewer projects:


R.V. Anderson Associates Limited receives recognition for innovation on infrastructure initiatives


STAFF WRITER – The OCR Construction Report Special Feature


Two recent award-winning projects describe how envi- ronment and infrastructure engineers R.V. Anderson Asso- ciates Limited (RVA) have combined creativity and care in designing and co-ordinating challenging underground proj- ects.


The multiphase Levack/Onaping water supply project in Sudbury received the Ontario Public Works Association (OPWA) 2010 Project of the Year Award for environmen- tal projects greater than $10 million, while (among other recognitions) the Western Sanitary Sewer Interception Re- habilitation Project in Hamilton has been recognized by the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers as engineering project of the year – municipal large project category. Both projects required resourcefulness and some care- ful planning, though their circumstances and environments are certainly different.


Levack and Onaping Water Supply Project, Sudbury The $18.5 million Levack and Onaping water project required some careful staging and co-ordination to meet tight regulatory deadlines. Levack and Onaping, two com- munities with a population of about 2,200, had a water sys- tem originally designed for the mining industry but which no longer complied with provincial environmental regula- tions, especially after the Walkerton disaster. Provincial authorities established strict “compliance deadlines on having the system updated or retrofitted, or taken off line,” said Shawn Scott, a principal and vice-pres- ident of R.V. Anderson, based in the engineer’s Sudbury office. “We ended up combining the two distribution sys- tems and one water supply to serve both communities.” “We were responsible for the environmental assessment phases, detailed design, wells, contract administration on all the phases, inspection of the water tower, crossing over the Onaping River, and other elements.” Scott said RVA divided the project into six phases, using


different contractors for the different stages. This allowed the project to move along quickly using a design-build phi- losophy that allowed construction to start at the first phase as design continued on later stages. “We broke the work into sections based on timing and constructability and how long it would take to build the in- dividual phases.”


In the end, the he says the contractors completed the work on schedule and within budget.


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