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Northwest Pipe’s Precision Design Aids Middlesex Water’s Plant Upgrade
Workers connect a section of new 72-inch AWWA C200 spiralweld steel pipe with cement mortar lining and coating to an existing reinforced concrete pipe with an inner diameter of 72 inches and an outer diameter of 84 inches.
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iddlesex Water Company (MWC), which owns and operates several water and wastewater systems across the mid-Atlantic region, recently built an ozone treatment facility as part of a $70 million upgrade to its largest treatment plant in New Jersey. This improvement was challenging from a design and construction perspective: it required the rapid relocation and reconnection of an existing 72inch reinforced concrete pipeline with a custom-designed steel pipe and elbow fitting manufactured by Northwest Pipe Company. To avoid disrupting service to MWC’s customers, Northeast Remsco Construction had to remove the existing pipe and install the new pipe in just 8 hours. In this interview, Michael J. Barnes, MWC’s director of project delivery, and Ron Payne, the senior project manager at Northwest Pipe Company’s Saginaw, Texas, plant, give us the owner's and manufacturer’s perspectives on this critical, highly precise project.
Michael J. Barnes: I am the director of project delivery for MWC. I graduated from Northeastern University in civil engineering with honor and went on to receive a
22 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | February 2021
Ron Payne: My current role is senior project manager at Northwest Pipe’s Saginaw, Texas, plant. I started with Northwest Pipe in 1991, so I’ve been here for 30 years. I started as a project designer, and through the years, I moved up to project manager and senior project manager. My job entails the drawing, engineering, and design side of pipe production. Once production starts, we hand it off to our production guys and we handle any design or contractual issues that may arise. municipalwaterleader.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF NORTHWEST PIPE.
Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your backgrounds and how you came to be in your current positions.
master’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin. I have over 40 years of experience with major civil engineering projects and started my career in 1978 as a water treatment consultant. In 1984, I started my operations career as director of aqueducts and distribution for the City of Jersey City, New Jersey. I have been responsible for raw and finished water pipelines of up to 102 inches in diameter. I was hired by MWC in 2013 as the executive director of a subsidiary water and sewer utility and was assigned to oversee and deliver the $70 million ozone treatment improvements at the company’s largest treatment plant, the Carl J. Olsen (CJO) Water Treatment Plant in Edison, New Jersey.
