Engineering Storm Water Solutions:
HDR's Daniel Suarez
HDR, Inc. is helping West Palm Beach, Florida, rethink its storm water. HDR developed analytical tools for the city’s storm water master planning process to prioritize storm water projects based on the actual conditions of the city’s water assets. Municipal Water Leader’s editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, spoke to HDR Senior Project Manager Daniel Suarez about the company’s involvement in West Palm Beach’s storm water management. Kris Polly: Can you tell me about the city of West Palm Beach’s storm water asset condition assessment program?
deferred over the years in order to address other infrastructure needs. However, the city has now acquired bond funding to repair its aging storm water infrastructure and extend its useful life and to address capacity deficiencies due to urbanization and sea level rise. The city recognized the need to develop a defensible and comprehensive long-term storm water asset condition assessment program and a methodology to help ensure that the appropriate method for repair will be applied. Senior Project Manager Daniel Suarez.
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Daniel Suarez: A key element of the project was the development of this methodology, which consists of a renewal decision logic and flow chart to document standard decisions to identify when renewal will be performed as well as the type of renewal to be used. The city was seeking to apply the most current proven technology and processes to support storm sewer system inspection, condition assessment, and renewal planning aligned with industry MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER
PHOTO COURTESY OF DANIEL SUAREZ.
Daniel Suarez: The city of West Palm Beach has a vast storm water infrastructure network. Most of the storm water system in the eastern portion of the city comprises vitrified clay pipe and was installed as early as the 1920s. Newer parts of the system comprise corrugated metal pipe, whose useful life is not as long as concrete pipe that is now a standard for large diameter pipe in coastal environments. Much of the required maintenance for the city’s storm water assets had been
Kris Polly: How was the storm water asset rehabilitation methodology developed?
