Wastewater Headworks Rehabilitation

IECONI was contracted to rehabilitate the headworks at a major wastewater treatment facility serving the City of Lake Jackson. On paper, the scope involved constructing a bypass system, rehabilitating the headworks structure, and returning the system to service.

Early review revealed two critical risks. The structural support for the bypass header had been designed on weakened concrete, introducing potential collapse risk. Even more concerning, the city’s largest lift station could only be taken offline for one hour during switchover. If that window was exceeded, wastewater could overflow, back up into residential homes, trigger regulatory penalties, and create public health consequences.

There was no engineered fallback scenario in the original design. If the transition failed, the city would absorb the consequences.

IECONI conducted a comprehensive constructability and operational risk review and determined that the existing plan transferred unacceptable exposure to the owner. We raised these concerns directly with the city and design engineers and initiated a collaborative re-evaluation of the system.

Hydraulic flow and force main capacity were analyzed in detail. From this analysis, we designed a secondary bypass system tied directly into the aeration basin. A tap-and-sleeve solution on the primary force main was proposed to provide immediate relief if the one-hour shutdown window could not be maintained.

During this review process, we also identified corroded wall flanges that had been omitted from the rehabilitation scope. Rather than defer inevitable failure, we recommended comprehensive replacement and upgraded materials from ductile iron to stainless steel to better withstand methane service conditions.

The revised approach required additional capital investment and formal approval from city leadership, but it eliminated catastrophic failure risk and strengthened the facility’s long-term integrity. IECONI refused to accept unmanaged risk and engineered it out.

The bypass transition was executed without incident. The city now operates with a secondary bypass redundancy that dramatically reduces overflow exposure. Structural integrity has been reinforced, material durability improved, and long-term maintenance risk lowered.

The most meaningful result was the absence of crisis.