Industrial Park Receives 500 Year Flood Protection
 The Dodson Industrial District is a unique mix of industrial, commercial, and retail businesses in the southeast area of Kansas City, MO. It may be the oldest, organized district in the City, dating back well before World War II. The Blue River, generally, is the southern boundary of the district. At one point, the oxbow of the river was cut off, diverting the river to its present course, leading the City to establish a landfill site in the former oxbow.
Due to the excessive and sudden flooding associated with this area, the US Army Corps of Engineers along with the City of Kansas City began a four-phase construction program to build a 1.29 mile levee and floodwall system to reduce the flooding risk for this area. 
There were two major cost drivers in this project; foundation preparation and sanitary sewer relocation. Nearly 50% of the project cost was related to foundation preparation due to the old uncontrolled landfill area and the undetermined amount of buried trash. The value team provided a solution that would achieve a positive seepage cutoff and reduce the large volume of excavation and disposal cost associated with removing this buried material, the Value Team recommended the use of a slurry cutoff wall that would improve the seepage control and minimize the required excavation.
Additionally the Value team provided solutions that would avoid the gravity sewer in the toe of the levee and protect the water main levels.
Industrial Park Receives 500 Year Flood Protection
Flood Control That is Environmentally Responsible
 Construction of the channel improvements began in 1983, with this being the final phase. The need for this structure resulted from the difference in the hydraulic gradeline between the improved channel and the unimproved channel. To further complicate the issue, just upstream of this structure is a Civil War historic battlefield that is being compromised by the channel improvements downstream.
The Grade Control Structure is 160 feet at the base and extends downstream from the tie-back walls 124 feet. The upstream tieback walls extend out 152 feet from each side of the structure and the basin floor is 7.5 feet thick. The 160-foot wide channel banks are lined with 24-inch and 18-inch thick riprap extending 160 feet downstream of the structure. As a measure of the massiveness of the structure, the structure rises 64 feet from the base and the tieback walls are over 7 foot thick at the base. Strategic Value Solutions, Inc. conducted a week long value-engineering study which resulted in benefits beyond the immediate cost savings to the project. The massive structure proposed conflicted with the City of Kansas Citys desires for this area to be a green space, and created a safety concern for those accessing the river.
The workshop provided a new concept to the concrete grade control structure. The Kansas City District provided the SVS Team the latitude to use outside the box thinking, coming up with alternatives to manage the energy that hadnt previously been examined. The team generated alternatives that satisfied the Corps technical requirements, while meeting the citys needs for low maintenance and desire to have a park-like setting. The alternatives eliminated the concrete structure and recommended installing a series of small rock weirs. These small rock grade control structures will mimic nature in distributing and dissipating energy. Soil bioengineering and other bank strengthening methods to limit erosion and damage to the historic battlefield area were incorporated. Incision and scour from lower flows is managed by placement of the grade controls; the banks are protected by selectively using rock toe armor, rather than armoring the entire bank. The result is an engineered channel that works with the forces of nature and compliments the surrounding area. All told, this value engineering study resulted in savings of $32,000,000 on this $40,000,000 project.
We have recently released a newsletter documenting the services we provided for the Building 465 Project, to download and view please click the link:
Flood Control That is Environmentally Responsible
Raw Water Reservoir
SVS conducted a 5-day Value Engineering Study on this Dam and Reservoir project was to create raw water storage to feed a planned 15 MGD water treatment plant (WTP) located nearby. The project includes the construction of a 315 meter long roller compacted concrete (RCC) gravity dam. The crest elevation is approximately 30 meters above the invert of the nearby river at elevation 103.5 meters. The normal operating pool will be at elevation 100.0 meters with a maximum flood pool at elevation 102.0 meters. The study resulted in almost $15 million (15% of the project budget) in savings.
Emergency Water Storage Dam
 SVS directed a five-day value planning workshop for an emergency water storage dam, which is used for water storage following an earthquake. The lake is a recreational lake with three other primary functions: to supply a Filtration Plant when the Santa Ana Valley Pipeline is out of service, to prevent rapid drawdown condition on the San Diego Canal, and to dilute the turbidity of high-sediment water from the Colorado River Aqueduct. The project was found to be unsafe, as it is founded on lenses of liquefiable materials, and in the event of severe seismic activity, would lower the crest elevation by more than 10 feet and result in a failure of the embankment, flooding all development downstream of the embankment. The study's goal was to find a feasible and economical solution to mitigate the potential for this expected deformation condition.
Stream Work Value Study Saves over 90%
 Through team leadership provided by SVS, the value engineering team was able to reduce the project cost of this $42 million project to $3 million. The studied project includes a three-mile reach of a creek through a pristine upper-scale subdivision in the heart of Kansas City, which causes frequent flooding to homes in excess of $500,000. Using natural stream design methods, the value engineering team was able to remove all but one home from the 100-year flood plain and reduce the construction cost from $42 million to $3 million, a savings of over 90%.
Urban Development Stormwater Flood Control
 This series of studies focused on the channel improvements to a Creek, a Railroad Bridge and a Street Bridge over the Creek, specifically 5,800 feet of the the Creek channel from Station -41+00 to 7+00. The function of the project is to reduce flooding by containing the entire 100-year flood flow within the Creek channel which is done by increasing the channel cross section by a combination of excavated sections with retaining walls and flood walls. The project realigns the channel in some areas and raises and replaces railroad bridge as well as replaces the roadway bridge. The entire three studies saved over 70% of the entire cost of the project.
|
