Time is of the essence on the new drinking water treatment plant project for De Soto, Kansas, built by general contractor Garney Construction working with HDR as Construction Manager at Risk (CMR).
The $42.6 million job had to be completed within a year to meet the needs created by the construction of a $4 billion electric vehicle battery plant by Panasonic, expected to bring 4,000 new jobs to the area. The Japanese electronics company is funding the water treatment plant under a Tax Increment Financing agreement with the city.
De Soto’s current water treatment plant was built by the U.S. Army in the 1940s to serve an ammunition plant, and it was transferred to the city in the 1990s when the Army plant closed. Its original capacity was 8 million gallons per day (GPD), but today’s capacity is approximately 2 million GPD.
“Panasonic's needs are about 1.5 million GPD and the city's about 1 million,” said Joe Johnson, City Public Works Director/Engineer. “So we had a bit of a deficit and knew we had to expand the plant. So we hired HDR to look at what it would take to expand the existing plant to get it to 8 million gallons.
“Garney took a look at what HDR was doing and said, ‘For what you're going to spend to rehab the plant, we can build you a brand new one.’ So we are doing that on the same footprint around the existing treatment plant.”
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The project includes installing a new concrete clarifier, dredging two old lagoons and creating two new ones, building a filter and administrative building, as well as a disinfection building, a softening basin, lime silo, clearwells, a high service pump station, and lagoons. Work began in March 2024.
“The schedule was definitely the biggest challenge to overcome,” Garney Project Manager Bill Morehead said. To meet the fast-track timetable, “some things that we liked were prefabricated structures and precast materials — anything that could be built off site and brought on site to help save time. From process equipment to building aspects, it was all evaluated. And then having a construction schedule that's communicated with the team, and milestone dates throughout, and keeping track of those milestone dates to make sure that we hit them.”
“I want to give the City of DeSoto a lot of credit for thinking forward on the delivery method using the CMR,” Garney Regional Operations Manager Joey Perell said. “With this model, we were able to order all the material and electrical gear way in advance of the construction documents being completed, and that was another huge thing that's going to allow us to complete this job in roughly 12 months.”
Even the project oversight by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment was able to respond to the aggressive schedule.
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“Most of the times, you design the plans and give them the final set, and they review them and have comments,” Johnson said. “We couldn't do that with this plant. We were submitting design packages as we were moving forward. And so, they were having to review 20 percent plans, 30 percent plans, 60 percent plans, 70 percent plans.
“We had lots of weekly meetings with them so they could understand our schedules and we could get plans to them, and they could understand what we needed to get from them as far as their reviews. They could have really slowed things down considerably. But they did a great job in working with us, and both Garney and HDR did a great job at getting them that information.”
Potential challenges that could have slowed work down were largely avoided. Due to the existing plant’s age and having two owners, the structure of the underground piping system was not fully clear.
“We lucked out,” Morehead said. “That plant is 80-plus years old and had multiple people over the course of time work on various parts and make improvements. There's some good staff with the city that have been around a while and knew a lot of things, and they were able to help with that.
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“Some of the things that we'd run into, there were always questions: ‘Was this still in service? Was this abandoned?’ Working through all those issues early on was a challenge. But once we understood it all, we were good from that point on.”
The plant is expected to be operational no later than the beginning of the second quarter of this year.
“We currently haven't had to do 12-hour, seven-day shifts and things like that,” Johnson said. “We're on schedule to be able to complete it on time.”
The plant’s capacity enables it to meet the needs of Panasonic’s possible future factory expansion as well as new industrial facilities and the city’s anticipated growth.
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“For me, the biggest thing about this project was the collaborative environment that has allowed us to do something that is rarely done, and build a functioning water treatment plant in 12 months,” Perell said. “It's a credit to the City of De Soto, HDR, and Garney for us all to work together closely to make it happen.”
- Owner: City of De Soto, Kansas
- Construction Manager at Risk: HDR, Inc., Omaha, Nebraska
- General Contractor: Garney Construction, Kansas City, Missouri
- Subcontractors: Davin Electric, Inc., Topeka, Kansas; Kruse Corporation, Wichita, Kansas (HVAC/plumbing); DN Tanks, El Cajon, California (prestressed concrete tanks)
- Suppliers: GK Smith and Sons, Paola, Kansas (HVAC equipment); AWC, Langley, British Columbia, Canada (filter equipment); WesTech Engineering, Salt Lake City, Utah (softening basin equipment); Chemco Systems L.P., Monongahela, Pennsylvania (lime silo and feed equipment)
