section is getting cleaned by a high-pressure spray bar,” Pletcher explained.“ The screen creates a barrier between the raw water from the ditch and the screened water entering the pipeline.”
Pletcher found a screen manufacturer – Hydro-Dyne Engineering, Inc., of Oldsmar, Florida – while browsing through a trade magazine. He e-mailed President Jay Conroy and received a response that evening. Hydro-Dyne had recently commissioned equipment for a similar application in British Columbia. The group quickly convened in Abbotsford, British Columbia, to view the screening technology in operation and meet with Conroy.
During that meeting, Conroy said he was skeptical the Fort Collins project could be completed so quickly.“ The timeline was so tight. We were pretty comfortable that we could make it happen on our end, but that doesn’ t mean anything if the City, Ayres Associates, and Hydro Construction don’ t perform flawlessly,” he said.“ It just sounded like an uphill battle. In my experience on other projects I didn’ t think we had much of a chance to meet that schedule.”
Jim Eurich, vice president and chief of operations for Hydro Construction, credits the APDS process for allowing the team to“ do something that couldn’ t be done.” With this system, he said,“ you check your ego at the door, set aside your own interests, and focus on the project. It works.”
In fact, by the time the group left British Columbia, they had all agreed on the time schedule.“ We did a week’ s worth of work in two hours while we had dinner,” Randall said. Conroy submitted shop drawings a few days later, and Ayres Associates and the City approved them in an hour around a conference table. Hydro Construction started making physical modifications to the existing structure to fit the screen while the new screen was being built. The group negotiated a contract in 10 days, as opposed to the typical 10 to 12 weeks with a standard contract mechanism.
Ayres Associates staff in the Tampa, Florida, office visited nearby Hydro-Dyne Engineering as the screen was being prepared for shipment and confirmed final dimensions for coordination with Hydro Construction’ s work in Fort Collins. With a tight project timeline, Hydro Construction was ready to set the screen in place the morning it arrived onsite.
Left: The dual-flow stainless steel traveling screen, shown here being installed with a crane, was retro-fit into the existing intake structure.
Top right: Wash water for the screen is generated onsite with this piping system that takes screened water through a basket filter to the spray bar headers at the top of the screen.