The City of Cleveland’s Division of Water (CWD), which supplies water service to more than 1.5 million residents in five Greater Cleveland counties, regularly utilizes General Engineering Services contracts for a wide variety of tasks related to the improvement and maintenance of their water treatment and distribution system. Wade Trim and a team of subconsultants have been supporting CWD since 2020 with this recurring contract, providing services ranging from planning and design to construction assistance. Under each iteration of the contract, projects have included water main sliplining design, site evaluation, cost estimating, subsurface condition assessment, regulatory agency reports, utility coordination, standard and process documentation, and a host of miscellaneous water system-related work. There have been 54 task orders authorized since our assistance to CWD began, each a standalone project with unique and varying scopes.

The rehabilitation of the 100-year-old Harvard-Denison Water Transmission Main is a highlight of our GES work with CWD thus far. Major improvements were needed on a leaking 42-inch internal diameter steel Lock-Bar water transmission main spanning 1,100 linear feet beneath the Cuyahoga River. The project, with shaft sites at both Old Denison Avenue and Harvard Avenue, includes replacement of the existing vertical pipe at both the Old Denison and Harvard sites, and sliplining the horizontal pipe more than 70 feet below ground surface with welded steel pipe. Preliminary design, detailed design, bid-package development, bidding support were provided, and construction phase support services are ongoing.

Key challenges have been coordination among the two shaft sites’ limitations and the existing utilities, and the evaluation of the feasibility of construction at the Denison site, which is in an industrial area near the Harvard-Denison bridge piers. Ground conditions dictated the need for a rigid, watertight excavation support system, so a secant pile shaft was chosen to allow access to the water transmission main and serve as a staging area to facilitate pipe lining construction activities. Sliplining of the transmission main will follow the completion of excavation for the secant pile shaft, which was completed in late 2023.

We also performed site survey, alternatives analyses, and preparation of rehabilitation design packages on another transmission main sliplining project at Highland Road in Richmond Heights. Currently under construction, the project entails rehabilitation of 3,800 linear feet of aging, 54-inch-diameter prestressed concrete cylinder pipe. Other task orders under the CWD’s GES contracts have included as-needed hydraulic modeling services, GIS support, tank and tower inspection, intake crib protection design, cathodic protection system inspections for tanks and towers, site evaluations for electric vehicle charging stations, and electrical arc-flash studies.