Conference Agenda

The City of Boise’s (City) water renewal utility, Water Renewal Services (WRS), has used a Business Case Evaluation (BCE) tool to inform capital project alternative evaluation and selection across their facilities since 2016. Following significant updates to their Level of Service (LOS) goals and Capital Project Delivery Model (PDM) through their Utility Plan development and implementation, they recognized the need to update their BCE tool’s criteria and processes to align with these new organizational values and processes.

In June 2022, the City engaged Brown and Caldwell (BC) to update their BCE tool to better align their organization-wide goals and commitments. The team improved user experience and drive tool adoption by refining usability and standardization. As a result, the new BCE:

• Aligned BCE tool assumptions, risks, and benefits with LOS
• Translated LOS goals into risk monetization criteria for inclusion into the tool
• Updated existing monetization assumptions and improve data source transparency
• Improved ease of use and overall BCE tool accessibility
• Increased the efficiency and defensibility of the decision-making process

This presentation will discuss the approach and results of the BCE tool update, outline how to translate high-level LOS goal language into quantifiable and monetizable evaluation criteria, and highlight opportunities for scaled application across other organizations.

The presentation will also provide the opportunity for other utilities and municipalities to consider how a BCE may help translate organizational values into decision-making criteria to support consistent application of LOS or other priorities throughout projects related to climate goals, utility resilience, employee experience, and more.

Known as the Emerald City, Seattle is famous for picturesque views, coffee culture and rain. Located on the shore of the Puget Sound in Discovery Park, the West Point Treatment Plant (WPTP) is the largest wastewater treatment plant in the Pacific Northwest, providing treatment for up to 440 million gallons per day of combined storm and sanitary flows. Operated by King County’s Wastewater Treatment Division (WTD), it is relied upon daily to protect the environment and the public health of approximately 750,000 residents and businesses in Seattle and northern King County.

Constructed in 1966 and expanded to secondary treatment in the early 1990’s, the WPTP needs significant investment over the next 10 years to improve resiliency and replace aging asset. As the workhorse of WTD’s treatment facilities, any construction that could affect the plant’s ability to provide peak treatment capacity is limited to each year’s “dry-season,” between April and September. Also, the facility is on a 32-acre site with land, water, height and depth constraints limiting available space for construction activities.

In June of 2020, WTD started to develop the West Point Capital Program (WPCP) with the vision to deliver projects at the WPTP in a coordinated manner, improving schedule performance, fostering better relationships between operations and project delivery staff, elevating project delivery procedures and reducing risks.

Implementing a programmatic delivery approach for the WPTP helps WTD to manage dependencies between projects, and provide consistent and integrated tools and documents to all project teams in real time. The program also improved communication across project teams, and enabled a broader management approach to identify, anticipate and manage schedule impacts and overall risks. This presentation will describe some key tools and processes that have served the WPCP well and contributed to the results obtained to date. It will also identify the challenges and lessons learned that the team faced while setting up the program and running the initial 2 years of the WPCP, and where the program will go from here.