CAPTION: Project Manager for the City of Hutchinson Erin Patterson shows photos of different repairs and damage made to the city’s water system. The engineering contract agreement between HDR and the city was approved on Tuesday, April 1. CREDIT CITY OF HUTCHINSON
By Emmie Amezola
The Hutchinson City Council gave the go-ahead for the city water utilities team to move forward with the signing of the integrated overall master water engineering contract with HDR Engineering Inc.
“The way we structured this with HDR is to be very much hands-on with this work,” Project Manager with the City Erin Patterson said. “They understand the importance of this work with us and one reason we picked them is because I feel like they are going to be more of a partner to us than somebody who comes in and dictates to us what this work is actually going to be.”
The master water plan has been discussed over the course of a couple of council meetings. The purpose of the master plan is to develop a comprehensive overall water plan for the city’s water utilities with a focus on system improvement and growth.
The goals of the master water plan are to set a roadmap for water utilities for the city in the short term and long term, immediate necessary actions for system reliability, ensure robustness of the systems in the changing environment, technical and financial strategies to support community and industrial growth.
Patterson said the master water plan is needed to fix frozen pipes, make repairs due to main breaks, aging structure and more.
“This is something that we don’t have and we don’t have an adequate roadmap for us for the next one to 50 years for our water systems and utilities,” Patterson said.
City staff received four total bids for the projects. Evaluation criteria for bidders included approach, personnel, schedule, project experience, cost, quality of proposal and response.
“For our committee, we felt that the most important thing was how they are going to approach the work and then personnel next because we want to make sure that we are getting the right team for the project who is going to execute the work in a matter that works for our utilities and our city,” Patterson said.
The kickoff date for the project is April 7, 2025. Site visits with HDR are planned for April 8-10 for two treatment facilities for site visit assessments.
The project will be broken up into two phases over an 18 month period. Phase one is planned to end in July 2025, and phase two is planned to end in 2026.
The contract with HDR is not to exceed the amount of $1,325,535 based on time and materials with a 10% contingency.
“There will be continuous deliverables, reviews as we progress through this,” Patterson said.
