Save money by inspecting before sewer cleaning
Spring weather is here and that usually means spring cleaning on all fronts, including the sewer system after a long winter. It's the time that formal bids and RFP's are prepared in anticipation for the upcoming work to inspect and clean the sewer system. The key slogan should be "inspect before you clean" and not "clean before you inspect".
Would you budget and pay a carpet cleaning company to vacuum your entire house if you only had one room of carpet to clean and the rest was tile? Certainly not. Even more certainly, you wouldn't want to pay for cleaning a pipe that may not need to be cleaned. You can get better bids and tremendous savings with new technology - technology that allows you to inspect your sewers without the expense of bypass pumping. Here's a recent inspect-before-you-clean project with a triple digit return on investment:
The City of Palo Alto knew that they needed to clean their sewer pipes - but first, they retained RedZone to inspect them. The result was a total savings of $330K and a ROI of 182% on just the RedZone investment.
Typical with most municipalities, Palo Alto visually inspected manholes for debris depths and specified a sewer cleaning project based on those estimates. Using this method, the City felt they needed to clean 9,875 lf of 48" - 72" large diameter sewer pipe. Proposals were received by a number of contractors, in August 2006. The lowest bid at this point was $955K.
Before proceeding, Palo Alto retained RedZone to verify sediment location and quantification in the sewer using its Responder system and SONAR sensor. Since Responder is digitally controlled and hydraulically driven, RedZone was able to navigate and inspect while the large diameter sewer pipes remained in service, eliminating the need for costly bypass pumping.
The results of the precleaning sediment sewer inspection were remarkable. As suspected by the city's engineers, a contiguous part of the original scope of work was virtually free of debris. Further investigation also showed that this part of the sewer cleaning project was located in a marsh and had severe access and potential environmental issues.
Of the original 9,875 lf of original scope, only 5,573 lf needed to be cleaned. The scope of work was reduced 43% (4,032 lf) and the project was put back out to bid. The City has received the bids, which are within budget, and recently awarded the contract.
Return on Investment (ROI)
- Lowest initial sewer cleaning bid was $955,064.
- Palo Alto engaged RedZone to inspect sewer pipe and provide data to publish an improved and more detailed specification.
- Palo Alto received new bids that included sewer cleaning only the sections that were needed based on the in-service inspection and eliminated those that did not.
- Net Savings: Palo Alto's return on the sewer inspection investment was almost $330,000 or 182%, after including the cost of RedZone's work.
Many thanks to Jame of the City of Palo Alto for his help with this case study -- from the whole team at RedZone
Use SONAR to meet your EPA requirements
In May 1995 the EPA published nine minimum sewage requirements. One of them, Control #2 (Maximum Use of the Collection System for Storage) requires relatively simple modifications to the combined sewer to enable the system to store wet weather flows until downstream sewers and treatment facilities can handle them. Another one, Control #3 (Maximization of Flow to the Plant for Treatment) requires municipalities to determine the capacity of the major interceptors that deliver flows to the plant. Knowing the location and quantity of sediment are a big part of these two controls. While the municipality of Palo Alto used SONAR to figure out what needed to be cleaned (and thereby reduced their costs), other municipalities use the same technique to figure out what needs to be cleaned (and then they can meet these two EPA requirements. Not to mention the money they save by cleaning only linear feet that require sewer cleaning.) |
