Leveraging Design Build to Deliver First of Its Kind Membrane Technologies

Climate change-driven water supply challenges have prompted the City of Santa Monica to implement a portfolio of innovative water supply projects under its 2018 Sustainable Water Master Plan. This paper presents two landmark projects that leverage advanced membrane technologies and alternative project delivery methods to diversify the City’s water supply and reduce dependence on imported sources. The first, the Sustainable Water Infrastructure Project (SWIP), is a $96 million Design-Build-Operate (DBO) facility featuring California’s first membrane bioreactor (MBR) system permitted with Log Reduction Values (LRVs) for potable reuse, the state’s first stormwater direct-injection facility, and a 1.5-million-gallon stormwater harvesting tank—together capable of supplying up to 1,600 acre-feet annually. The second project used a Progressive Design-Build (PDB) approach to deliver the first municipal Flow Reversal Reverse Osmosis (FRRO) retrofit in the United States, increasing groundwater recovery at the Arcadia Water Treatment Plant from 83% to over 90%. This paper discusses how the PDB and DBO delivery models facilitated collaborative risk identification and management, pricing flexibility, and regulatory coordination when implementing these first-of-their-kind technologies. Key lessons learned across procurement, pre-construction, and construction phases are shared to help other utilities successfully adopt alternative delivery strategies for complex water infrastructure projects.