Council Should Look at More Cost Effective Wastewater Plan

wastewater-treatmentBy Matt Williams

Editor’s Note: The following were comments presented to the Davis City Council on Tuesday night and submitted to the Vanguard for publication.

In a recent community dialogue about coming up with the funding for the millions of dollars needed to repair Davis’ roads, the following observation was shared.

“Speaking of millions, you have the Request for Proposal for the wastewater project that is going out, which will cost us $95 million.

However, imagine if the project only costs about $65 million, which is what staff estimated the city could save going to a regional approach that the council voted down in late March.”

A Regional wastewater option is not the only one that offers Davis residents the possibility of saving $30 million.  One of the Local wastewater options appears to be able to save Davis $20 million in capital costs and $1 million per year in Operating expense.  Together those two amounts combine to yield a $47 million Net Present Value savings. That comes very close to funding all of the $55 million needed to pursue the Plan A road repair.

A major impediment to even exploring the possibility of saving that $47 million is that Staff has constructed an RFQ that effectively makes one specific Design of the wastewater upgrade a prerequisite.  That is ironic considering the fact that Davis has recently hired a Chief Innovation Officer, because the course the RFQ charts effectively eliminates the possibility that wastewater technology innovation can save Davis that $47 million.

This irony becomes even stranger when one looks at the video of April 23rd Council meeting Item 9, in which Council clearly directed Staff to go back and rework the RFQ so that its focus is on the ability to provide a solution to our wastewater challenges, and specifically, with a concentration on performance criteria rather than a specific design.

The sad thing is that this impediment is really quite easy to fix. As I stated in public comment on Tuesday, “The Staff Report refers to “our project”, “our wastewater project”, “the project” etc., and further throughout the document the term “Project” is a capitalized term. It is therefore easy to assume the “Project” is the Charrette Design project, and therefore all respondents must demonstrate experience with the “Project” (i.e. the Charrette Design).  As written, this consistently used wording appears to side-step the direction Council gave Staff on April 23rd.

“In an e-mail exchange [on Tuesday] with Michael Lindquist, initiated by him, for which I thank him, he and I discussed propagating the words in the second paragraph of Page 2 throughout the Staff Report and RFQ document.  If we do that then we will be moving toward selecting “…the best team to design and construct a project for Davis that meets the Charrette Plan performance criteria.” Michael’s response to my initial suggestion was “Thanks for the prompt reply.  I like your statement of  […]   It is much clearer characterization of our objectives.”  I agree with Michael.

“Performance criteria” is an understandable standard for an RFQ of a Design-Build (DB) procurement.  “Project Criteria” appears to be a standard for an RFQ of a de-facto “Bid-Build” (BB) procurement for a project that with a predetermined Design.

“Bottom-line, we have the time that we need to get the RFQ “right.” I ask that Council direct Staff to go back and take the time to make sure the whole RFQ document is responsive to the direction Council gave to Staff on April 23rd.”

Unfortunately when the dust settled on Tuesday night, a split Council on a 4-1 vote with Brett Lee in the minority didn’t stay true to their April 23rd directive to Staff, and in the process effectively turned their back on the possibility of saving an NPV of $47 million.

Just before the vote was called, in an interchange that began at the 1:56 point in Tuesday’s video, Mayor Krovoza explained how he was going to vote as follows, “The Charrette [design] is the plan for the local alternative […] and a selection based on pure performance standard approach […] is not the current position of the past Council and may or may not be the position of this current Council.”

In response, Brett Lee cited the previous Council’s votes in support of an 18 mgd Surface water plant, which the current Council downsized to 12 mgd.  Then he noted that, “Previous Councils voted for a lot of things that we are currently not too thrilled about.”

So with all the above said, here is a simple road toward being sure we don’t miss the chance to fund road repairs from wastewater upgrade savings.  Issue an RFQ that focuses on:

  1. Criteria for meeting our needs not a specific design
  2. Cost Effectiveness (value received for money spent)
  3. Technology independence
  4. Using the Charette plan as a working specification of performance criteria, and doesn’t overlook the fact that as a specific design, it is already five-years old.

Those four steps are not difficult ones, and if Staff is committed to them, can be included in a revised RFQ document in less than two weeks.  That is an especially prudent course of action given the condition of our roads and the potential to apply a $47 million NPV savings toward those roads.

Thank you for your consideration.

About The Author

David Greenwald is the founder, editor, and executive director of the Davis Vanguard. He founded the Vanguard in 2006. David Greenwald moved to Davis in 1996 to attend Graduate School at UC Davis in Political Science. He lives in South Davis with his wife Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald and three children.

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5 Comments

  1. Matt Williams

    Good question SODA. There is one company that has been in active communication with the City over the past two years (maybe longer) touting their concept, which has been delivered/built in 21 sites in California, Arizona and New Mexico. They are the ones who have provided the City with alternative costs. So, in the sense of your question that could be paraphrased as, [i]”Is this just a theoretical concept?”[/i] the answer is that it is real and demonstrable and referenceable. Yolo County officials from Planning and Public Works have gone on a site visit to an up and running facility in their explorations of solutions for Dunnigan.

    With that said, the fact that PERC Water has been bird dogging Davis does not mean they are the only such wastewater solution that works hard to leverage a tried and true delivery model and as a result not to charge the customer to reinvent the wheel at each new plant. So focusing the RFQ on Perfomance Criteria that will solve Davis’ wastewater problems, will no doubt result in RFQ submissions from other companies whose primary focus is on innovative wastewater solutions rather than wastewater design/redesign engineering.

    The Charrette process has illuminated the problem Davis has superbly. The Charrette process has established solid performance criteria that any proposed solution to that problem needs to provide. The specific design/company (designs/companies) that will come out of a performance criteria RFQ process will be ones that will provide Davis the greatest value for the dollars we spend. If that means we save money (enough money to fund our road repairs) then I say that is good for the quality of life in the City of Davis.

    Hope that helps.

  2. Matt Williams

    SODA (and everyone), one clarification about the RFQ process Davis has adopted is that the City will evaluate all the RFQ submissions and select three of the submitting bids as the best ones, and those three selected bidders will then submit full blown RFP submissions outlining in a what I understand is referred to as a “30% Design” level the specific solution they proposed in their RFQ. All the RFQ submissions will have provided all their qualifications of how they propose to Design and Build the solution that meets the performance criteria. The RFP submissions will provide the detailed specifics of the actual Design and Build (DB) process they propose for Davis.

    I strongly support that open, transparent, competitive and cost-effective process.

  3. SODA

    thx Matt as always…..I did not watch the CC as am out of town (? streaming on ipads yet?) but your answers seem to indicate you are OK with the current RFP process….true? your article seems in conflict with the comments you made…..I must be missing something!

  4. Matt Williams

    SODA, I’m okay with an RFQ process that focuses on meeting performance criteria. That is consistent with Council’s chosen Design-Build (DB) direction. I’m not okay with an RFQ process that focuses on “our design” and “our project.” That is not consistent with Council’s chosen DB direction.

    As noted in my public comment, the “our project” approach is de-facto a Design-Bid-Build (DBB) process in which Staff has pre-completed the Design portion of the DBB, leaving the Bid-Build portions to be completed by the RFQ and RFP. That significantly dampens the likelihood that Davis will get maximum benefit from innovation in wastewater treatment.

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