ACEC of Iowa Honors HR Green With 3 Engineering Awards
HR Green, Inc. (HR Green) received three Engineering Awards from the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) of Iowa. The awards competition recognizes projects of engineering achievement by Iowa consulting engineering firms. Entries are judged on the basis of engineering excellence, the degree to which the client’s needs are met, and the benefits to the public.
HR Green received Engineering Achievement Awards in the Special Projects Category for the “I-35/I-80/IA 141 Interchange IJR & NEPA” project in Urbandale and the “5th Street Reconstruction” project in Coralville. An Honor Award was received for the “Raw Water Improvements” project in the City of Spirit Lake in the Water and Wastewater category.
Urbandale: I-35/I-80/IA 141 Interchange IJR & NEPA
The joined I-35 and I-80 routes at the IA 141 interchange in Urbandale is a critical national Interstate System segment that has been a traffic operations and safety concern dating back to interchange studies in the early 1990s. Traffic backups and high crash rates often occur. The project involved evaluation of complex Interstate related geometry and traffic operations analysis.
HR Green led a multi-discipline team to conduct an Operations Study, Interchange Justification Report (IJR) and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) documentation. The successful completion of the IJR and NEPA documents and approval processes has the overall project on target for completion in 2020.
Coralville: 5th Street Reconstruction
The 5th Street Reconstruction Project included partial reconstruction of 5th Street from 2nd to 3rd Avenue and complete reconstruction from 3rd to 4th Avenue. HR Green’s team of landscape architects and engineers worked together to produce a design that would improve the transportation, pedestrian, and stormwater issues facing the area. Many sustainable means and methods were incorporated into the design of this project and multi-modal accommodations were made.
Spirit Lake: Raw Water Improvements
The City of Spirit Lake needed improvements to its raw water system to increase capacity and to protect the intakes from being clogged by either zebra mussels or sediment. HR Green completed a Preliminary Design Report (PDR) that evaluated the existing raw water system and made recommendations for improvements. During the preliminary design process, HR Green recommended a phased approach regarding how the City could upsize the raw water transmission main. This approach removed hydraulic bottlenecks and provided more time for the City to begin the next phase of installing a long transmission main.