Billings Engineers Club Honors 2008 Innovative Project of the Year

Morrison-Maierle, Inc., a “Top 500 Design Firm” offering planning, design, surveying, and construction engineering services throughout the western United States, shared the 2008 Innovative Project of the Year Award from the Billings Engineers Club (BEC) with HDR Engineering and the City of Billings for the Gerald D. Underwood Filter Building Expansion and Improvements project. Morrison-Maierle was a sub-consultant to HDR Engineering, providing construction inspection services through Resident Project Representative Wayne Wyman in the Billings office. Surveying, electrical design, and instrument and control design services were also provided by Morrison-Maierle.

The new Gerald D. Underwood Filter Building was designed to deliver 65 mgd of water through eight newly renovated and four newly constructed filters to the City of Billings and its customers, which includes the refineries and the Billings Heights Water District. The project also included the construction of a 150-foot by 215-foot cmu building with a brick veneer face constructed on a cast-in-place concrete footings and structural walls, pre-cast columns, beams and hollow core roof panels along with a new HVAC system, conveying system, handicap accessibility, five new offices, conference room, lunchroom, restroom-shower and locker room facilities along with a new state-of-the-art control operations room and a new Plant security system.
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The project was under strict guidelines in regards to construction sequencing. One such guideline was that the existing plant was never to be without a minimum of six operational filters at any one specific time. The operation of the Plant during all construction sequencing with monitoring of the Plant in regards to all Water Quality Control was of the utmost priority. The project consisted of the addition of four new filters and underdrain systems. The removal of the old flume system which was of an interior design to a new exterior flume system with a portion of it constructed on drilled piers which was quite a feat in regards to keeping the existing filters up and running. The demolition of the existing pipe gallery and pneumatic valve system and the construction of a newly designed accessible center pipe gallery with electrical operated valves that are operated with input signals from a newly installed integrated automated system were quite monumental. The project also included the addition of a Filter to Waste system never before designed into the existing Plant. The milestones along with the construction sequencing in regards to the demands of the existing Plant at high and low pumpage was quite a feat given some of the restraints placed on the system in regards to Plant demands and sequencing. The integration and the turning this into a fully automated Plant Backwash System was quite trying and there are still “bugs” to be worked out.

The BEC presents this award in recognition of a firm that exhibits outstanding achievement using innovation in engineering design. The definitions of innovation, for the purposes of this award, include projects of a scale larger than a Montana firm would normally achieve, designs which are the first of their kind from a Montana firm, projects with a difficult or tight time line, projects that involve a substantial coordination effort, projects deploying new or innovative construction techniques or practices, and designs employing new design technology in modeling or computer-assisted design tools.

The Billings Engineers Club (BEC) is a conglomerate of engineering societies brought together to share their experience and support their engineering societies through service and the recognition of excellence. Members of the BEC include the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), the Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) to name a few.