Construction Phase Collaborative Risk Management of Soft Ground Tunnels for the Integrated Pipeline Project in Texas

The Tarrant Regional Water District (TRWD) and the City of Dallas Water Utilities (DWU) are in process of developing a 350 MGD water transmission system known as the Integrated Pipeline Project (IPL). Considering various project conditions, a set of challenging, high-risk tunnels were combined to the PL19TUN project—a component project of the overall IPL. To mitigate against these risks, the collaboration between the Owner's Project Team (OPT) and the Contractor allowed the project team to mitigate against identified risks and set the stage for management of unknown risks occurring during construction of the project. Several risk mitigation processes were implemented for use in the construction phase, including special contractual terms and conditions, formal partnering and dispute resolution, risk management administration, and the development of various focused contract contingencies. Numerous collaborative tools were used to track work, including a tunnel dashboard with real-time production data, TBM telemetry and geotechnical instrumentation data, as well as real-time as-built surveying. This paper will discuss project conditions, collaborative processes, and risk management as well as project status, success, and lessons learned to date on this interesting project.