A treatment plant operator collects samples from a metals treatment system at a groundwater treatment facility.
U.S. industry faces the daunting task of managing investigations and clean-ups at thousands of contaminated properties. In staying abreast of new technology and ever evolving regulatory programs, companies must address many challenges involving regulations, technologies and costs.
For each project, it is important to focus on the ultimate goal of regulatory closure, periodically revisit and re-assess the design basis for the remediation strategy along with the approach, and carefully manage operation and maintenance costs.
Three project management strategies consistently help companies address these challenges and reduce or eliminate contaminated site liabilities and costs: integrated site closure, remediation system evaluations, and outsourcing operation and maintenance.
Integrated site closure combines assessment and remediation in a comprehensive site closure strategy to help clients remediate hazardous waste sites more quickly and at lower cost than a traditional remediation approach. This approach often involves a multi-disciplinary team of scientists, engineers and regulatory experts working on agency negotiations, site investigation, risk assessment, feasibility evaluation, design engineering, remediation, and the operation and maintenance of hazardous waste sites, in order to move the project steadily toward the goal of efficient site closure. For example, an ENSR company ISC team helped the Fort James Co. to save $165,000 during the closure of an ecologically sensitive site by using the team’s baseline ecological and human health risk assessments to successfully negotiate site-specific alternate clean-up standards with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. ENSR also worked closely with the New Jersey Historical Society to preserve the site’s foundations, which kept the project schedule on-track and resulted in additional savings.
Remediation system evaluations provide a comprehensive review of ongoing remediation programs, focusing on evaluation of several key areas. Properly implemented, these evaluations are a tool to identify alternatives that may save money and improve performance, and will generate an action item list for the owner to consider implementing. However, RSEs are not intended as detailed engineering specification projects, nor are they formal demonstration of technical feasibility.
Common problems uncovered by RSEs include unclear system objectives, conflicting performance criteria, poor linkage between performance and cost decision making, and expensive data collected that is not effectively utilized. A five-year-old remediation program may no longer be the most cost-effective strategy, based on changes in system parameters, site conditions, regulatory controls, or technology advances that impact even well-designed and well-implemented systems.
An important first step for any RSE is to establish the objectives of the remediation program, i.e., containment, clean-up or receptor protection. In each case, the ultimate goal of the RSE is to assist the owner in meeting the objectives of the remediation program while seeking to lower costs, shorten project timelines, improve effectiveness, reduce liabilities and achieve site closure.
Outsourcing operation and maintenance of remediation programs to a qualified environmental services firm enables a company to closely manage cost and performance, while focusing their energy on their core business.
A long-term fixed-price and fixed-performance contract requires the provider to have a monetary stake in effective maintenance and system performance. Extended contract terms of five to 10 years or a portfolio of multiple sites affords the provider the opportunity to leverage better pricing from vendors and to provide the owner with superior rates and margins based on job security, lower proposal costs, and lower contract administration costs.
The operation and maintenance provider thus becomes a partner: incentivized to maintain and operate equipment in the most cost effective manner possible – carefully managing costs, not just passing them through to the owner. The scope of work and base equipment repair and replacement costs are established and agreed upon in the contract negotiation stage. The provider must balance risk and reward when establishing pricing, and the extended contract terms allow an offset of risks with correspondingly lower prices and lower costs for the owner. The operation and maintenance provider can obtain lower prices with the added leverage of having a contract in hand.
Project efficiencies are also achieved by reduced contract administration costs, centralized communications, and consistent project management standards and practices.
These remediation strategies eliminate uncertainty and risks with contaminated properties, and facilitate regulatory closure.
