INNOVATION May-June 2016

ENERGY & INDUSTRY Awards of Merit Capilano Energy Recovery Facility Consultant: Knight Piésold Ltd. • Owner/Client: Metro Vancouver • Location: North Vancouver, BC Metro Vancouver’s Energy

Fort St. John Micro Hydro Facility Consultant: Urban Systems Ltd. • Owner/Client: City of Fort St. John • Location: Fort St. John, BC The City of Fort St. John

Recovery Facility is located at the downstream end of a seven-kilometre tunnel from the Seymour–Capilano Filtration Plant. With a 30-metre elevation drop from plant to facility, a system to dissipate excess pressure energy and provide reliable water supply continuity was required. The consultant supplied and installed the turbine—one of the largest-known hydroelectric turbines in a municipal treated drinking water system in North America—as well as upgrades to the dechlorination system, and final commissioning of the facility.

engaged the consultant to seek out opportunities for clean and renewable energy production within the city. The city’s south sewage lagoon system was selected as the source for a micro hydro facility. The resulting facility intercepts and diverts the existing effluent stream to a small building that houses a pelton wheel turbine and 100 kiloWatt generator. After discharging through the turbine, the effluent stream is diverted back to the original outfall line, where it continues on to the Peace River. Electricity generated is metered and sent to the local grid.

TRANSPORTATION & BRIDGES Award of Excellence World Trade Centre Transportation Hub: The Oculus Consultant: COWI North America (COWI Bridge, formerly Buckland & Taylor) • Owner: Port Authority of New York and New Jersey • Client: Skanska USA • Location: Manhattan, New York  Located where the World Trade Centre twin towers once stood, the World Trade Centre Transportation Hub— the Oculus—serves as the entrance to the new transit station. Inspired by a pair of hands releasing a white dove, the Oculus’s design pushes architectural and structural limits, and its erection engineering, completed by the consultant, was equally complicated. The consultant applied its expertise in bridge engineering to design a safe and successful construction method, which reduced the Oculus’s project cost and schedule, and in the end met the tight geometric tolerances required for the building’s glazing. Award of Merit Piece-by-Piece: The Deconstruction of the Old Port Mann Bridge Consultant: McElhanney Consulting Services Ltd. • Owner: BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure • Client: Kiewit–Flatiron Joint Venture • Location: Surrey and Coquitlam, BC McElhanney engineered and prepared a step-by-step manual for removing the five-decade-old Port Mann Bridge across the Fraser River in a way that would be safe for workers, the environment, and the new bridge and its travelers just 25 metres away. The team designed temporary towers and stay cables to support the bridge during deconstruction, as well as a sequence that incorporated layers of redundancy and the ability to adapt to the unpredictable behavior of the old structure in real time. Shipping and rail traffic next to the bridge remained uninterrupted through deconstruction.

SOFT ENGINEERING Award of Excellence River Training Works in Bangladesh: Protecting the Padma Bridge Consultant: Northwest Hydraulic Consultants • Owner/Client: Bangladesh Bridge Authority • Location: Bangladesh The Padma River Multipurpose Bridge provides a new fixed crossing in Bangladesh. Because of the river’s high flow and shifting banks, the project required extreme river engineering and river training. The consultant designed the training works to stabilise and guide the typically greater than 10-kilometre-wide channel through the existing five-kilometre-wide channel at the bridge, and to protect against scour failure of the piers and abutments, while minimising upstream and downstream impacts. The consultant applied extensive numerical and physical models to evaluate options and designs. Award of Merit Quesnel Lake Observations and Modelling Consultant: Tetra Tech EBA • Owner: Imperial Metals  • Client: Mount Polley Mining Corporation/Imperial Metals Ltd. • Location: Likely, BC After the 2014 failure of the tailings storage facility at the Mount Polley Mine and a debris flow along Hazeltine Creek, suspended particulate material entered Quesnel Lake. The consultant was retained to

measure, then predict, behaviour of suspended particulate matter in Quesnel Lake, and to reconcile the volumes of deposited material with estimates of the volumes discharged. Tetra Tech implemented its hydrodynamic model H3D, addressed wind and material-composition uncertainties, and provided predictions of turbidity levels within two months. The predictions, verified and improved as observational data became available, accurately indicated timing and magnitude of turbidity levels. v

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