AWWA ACE60082

The City of North Miami Beach (City) currently owns and operates the Norwood-Oeffler Water Treatment Plant (WTP). The City has implemented a Water Expansion Program that would expand and improve the City's water system to provide an additional 17.0 million gallons per day (MGD) of capacity that will allow almost complete independence from bulk purchases of potable water from Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department (WASD), and improve the quality of water that would be delivered to their customers. The Water Expansion Program as outlined by the City includes initial phase improvements to provide a total production capacity of 32.0 MGD. The first phase of the improvement program will move the City closer to independence from the Miami-Dade WASD, and will utilize membrane technology to treat Biscayne Aquifer and Floridan Aquifer source waters with nanofiltration (NF) and low pressure reverse osmosis (RO), respectively. Since September 11, 2001, water utilities across the nation have been implementing improved water security plans, and performing vulnerability assessments to secure the integrity of their water treatment and distribution systems. The City of North Miami Beach has incorporated the results and recommendations of such reviews in the design of their Water Expansion Program. However, as the City approached bidding their large scale project, they were faced with a limited amount of published information available relative to securing construction documents during the bidding process. This paper presents a summary of the City's findings relative to the experience of other utilities securing construction documents during the bidding process, a summary of the protocol that the City of North Miami Beach adopted for their bidding process, a review of plan room practices relative to securing plan room document sets, and a review of other considerations that utilities should evaluate prior to bidding large scale projects, especially when the bidding documents include the security system design.