Black & Veatch formed a joint venture with Thiess and together created the W2W (Water 2 Water) Alliance with Water Corporation, Western Australia. The W2W Alliance is providing AUD$350 million (US$321 million) of extensive wastewater treatment plant upgrades over a five-year programme to the metropolitan plants of Beenyup and Woodman Point. 

Both facilities have been upgraded to treat 285 million litres (75 million gallons) of wastewater daily and to collectively serve 1.2 million Perth residents. The upgrade increased the capacity and performance of a number of assets within the existing plants. This included grit removal and primary settlement tank improvements; odour treatment; sludge handling, thickening and processing; sequential batch reactor and clarification enhancements; and instrumentation and control improvements. 

The W2W Alliance achieved more than 1,000 brownfield tie-ins with no significant incident and executed the work with a “fantastic safety record of 2.15 million hours Lost Time/Injury-free,” said Keith Cadee, General Manager, Acquisition Group, Water Corporation. “Odour used to be a real big issue in the community. But with our new Black & Veatch-designed odour facility, which includes a sustainable bioscrubber process, the community is thanking the Alliance,” Cadee said.  

The addition of a third egg-shaped digester at the Woodman Point treatment plant is part of a sustainable biosolids program, enabling the plant to expand the sludge treatment capacity and allowing the treatment of 15 percent more flow through the entire plant. 

“We also collect the biogas to generate electricity to serve the plant’s energy needs while recycling all of our biosolids to agriculture,” said Kevin Guppy, Principal Project Manager.  

Black & Veatch’s strength and depth, brought by worldwide technical specialists, allowed a whole-of-plant design, linking each of the 14 discrete projects. Black & Veatch’s principal responsibilities were to provide engineering design services (both in-country and via resources in the United States, UK, India and Singapore), as well as project controls, procurement, project management and commissioning resources. 

“We’ve been working with Black & Veatch people almost continuously for more than a decade now, and we find them not only very professional, but also very enjoyable to work with,” Guppy said. “There’s a very high degree of alignment between our cultures.”