Dry Utility Design

[GoldDredger]

An issue that has been causing me considerable project management time and scope creep has been the site dry utilities.

I am referring to the electric, telephone, gas and cable. We are the civil engineers, hired by a developer, who in turn also hires architect(s) for the individual buildings. (A shopping center for example, 50+ acres, numerous individual buildings).

The problem seems to stem between who is responsible for what. The architect and MEP determine electrical and gas load for the individual building, as well as the service locations to the building. The service providers (ie electric company) designs the size and location of transformers across the site (based presumably on the load information provided by the architect). The site lighting consultant designs all the parking lot lights, which sometimes overlap with the building wall pack lights.

The question I have is who is typically responsible for all this coordination? I wanted to just provide the site layout and utility (water, sewer, storm) drawings, and let the developer, architects and contractors work it out from there. Certainly didn’t turn out that way.

I found myself right in the middle of trying to coordinate multiple architects and subs between sometimes unresponsive utility service providers. Despite the large size of the site, everything was still very tight. Conflicts between vaults and dumpsters, vaults and wet utilities, light poles and waterlines, it seemed to never end.

Also, it has been said that the civil engineer is supposed to show the dry utilities on the construction drawings (for reference). Problem is the dry utility design is usually well after the civil drawings have approval. Also, by placing them on the drawings, I feel we take some responsibility for their proper layout, or at least identifying conflicts with other facilities on site. (As an aside, I also felt since dry utilities are not dependent upon gravity, they should be designed around all the other infrastructure. Not everyone I encountered seemed to agree with that)

Anyway, has anyone had any experience with this? What have you done to avoid this kind of hassle?

 

[civilperson]

The municipality that permits and reviews your sub-division has standards for the typical locations and easement standards for utilities. A series of standard plates showing crossings and solved conflicts should be available. The designer of the layout of the lots and Right-of Ways is responsible for grading and gravity sewers as well as easements and typical locations of utilities to match the Municipalities standards and recording the final plat.

 

[PELS]

In my experience, the function of coordinating the design and scheduling of dry utilities has historically been different from project to project and has been a "Pain in the A$$" to deal with. Sometimes the developer's representative has taken on that role, sometimes one of the dry utility companies has and sometimes it has fallen on the Civil Engineer. There is definitely enormus coordination required.

That function is not in the realm of Civil design IMHO (wasn't included in your college curriculum) and if the developer requires that coordination from you, you deserve to be compensated. You need to have a section in your contract to address this and you should push for it to be T&M because it is so difficult to predict the time involved and each job will be different.

In our area, private contractors began to spring up specializing only in the installation of dry utilities because, for the most part, the utility companies could not keep up with the developer's schedule. Those contractors have evolved to include design capability. Many ex-utility company personnel can be seen working for these private contractors. They now also include project management and coordination of the design of all the dry utility components and this has improved the process immensely.

These special "utility" consultants end up preparing a "Joint Trench" plan which includes Gas, Electric, Telephone & CATV. All those facilities in one trench, but in separate conduits. These are drawn on a separate set of plans with the civil site plan as the base. These drawings are always just schematic. The responsibility and liability for that design does not fall on the Civil.

I also agree with you that the gravity flow utilities have less flexibility in their design than the dry utilties and therefore, that design should dictate where everything else ends up. Utility companies around here acknowledge this.

 

[bimr]

The site developer is responsible for the utilities (electric, telephone, gas and cable) on the site.

These utilities would typically want to be reimbursed for the site improvements as well. How are you dividing that cost up? The costs for these utilities should be added to the costs of the parcels by the developer.

If you don't want to deal with these utilities, you should specifically exclude them from your contract scope. It sounds like you just picked up these duties by default.