Jack Z. Smith Special Projects Reporter Fort Worth Business Press
The Tarrant Regional Water District board is expected to approve three contracts–including one with Fort Worth-based Freese and Nichols–for a total of nearly $20 million for management support services for the huge $2.3 billion Integrated Pipeline Project. The board is scheduled to vote on the contracts at its 9:30 a.m. Tuesday meeting at district offices at 800 E. Northside Drive in Fort Worth. District management has recommended approval of the proposed contracts, which were reviewed by the board’s Construction and Operations Committee on Friday. The proposed contract with Freese and Nichols is for $5,515,194. The firm is to assist in construction managment and observation, engineering and procurement strategies, according to the board meeting agenda.
Freese and Nichols already has been working as a subcontractor on the Integrated Pipeline Project, known as the IPL, for “integrated pipeline.” The TRWD, the dominant supplier of raw water to Tarrant County, is partnering with Dallas Water Utilities to build the IPL, which will greatly increase the volume of water that can be delivered from the district’s Richland-Chambers and Cedar Creek reservoirs, which are southeast of Fort Worth . The IPL will boost the pipeline capacity from the reservoirs, the TRWD’s two biggest sources of water, by 197 million gallons per day, a 52 percent increase. More than two-thirds of increased delivery capacity is expected to be realized by 2020, and the remainder by about 2030, TRWD previously has projected.
The increase in water-delivery capabilities, coupled with expanded water conservation, could delay by decades the need for TRWD to secure new sources of water, TRWD Engineering Services Director David Marshall earlier said. The TRWD board also is expected Tuesday to award a $7,775,531 contract to Lakewood, Colo.-based Toeroek Associates Inc. (which has an office in Dallas) and a $6,199,222 contract to AECOM Technical Services Inc. (a unit of Los Angeles-based AECOM) for $6,199,222, with both providing various management support services for the IPL project. The proposed contracts with Freese and Nichols, Toeroek and AECOM total $19,489,947. All three firms already have been working as primary subcontractors on the IPL project for Leidos Engineering Inc., whose contract expires Friday and “will not be renewed,” the TRWD board agenda said. The three subcontractors already had been providing “the majority of the (management support services) staff for the project for the past few months,” the agenda said.
The decision not to renew the contract represented “a mutal parting of the ways,” TRWD spokesman Chad Lorance said. Leidos has undergone changes and the work desired for the IPL project going forward is now somewhat “outside the scope of their business,” Lorance said. The IPL entails construction of 149 miles of new pipeline and related infrastructure from Lake Palestine in East Texas to Benbrook Lake in southwest Tarrant County, with connections to Richland-Chambers and Cedar Creek reservoirs. Â