Environmental legislation gets more restricted everywhere in Europe. One of these restrictions in the Netherlands is the limitation of depositing waste from the sewerage on surface waters, in times of large discharges.
For this reason, the municipality of Almelo was willing to build a storage-settling tank which has a storage capacity of at least 2300 m3. The storage-settling tank has got two main functions. First, it decreases the amount of wastewater that is discharged on surface waters, by storing it in the tank. Second, the waste in the wastewater is able to sink to the bottom of the tank when it is stored. As a result, the amount of wastewater that needs to be discharged, is limited and the wastewater has got less concentration of waste.
Integrated contract
The municipality of Almelo was willing to apply an integrated contract for the realisation of the storage-settling tank. Witteveen+Bos drew up this contract, in the form of a Design&Construct-contract. The main characteristic of this contract was the high degree of freedom for the potential contractors to design the storage-settling tank. The main requirements in the contract where the capacity and the dimensions of the tank, the rate of settling and the integration of the tank in the environment. The potential contractors were free in engineering the civil, mechanical, electrical and control technical parts of the storage-settling tank. Witteveen+Bos also tendered the contract. The tendering was performed by determining the tender with the best combination of functionality of the storage-settling tank and the building costs.
Results
As a result of this Design&Construct-contract, the municipality of Almelo allocated the responsibilities of the realisation of the storage-settling tank towards the contractor. By describing the minimal specifications, the municipality of Almelo gets a storage-settling tank that meets their requirements. Also, by giving the potential contractors freedom in designing the storage-settling tank, they where able to use innovative solutions. Furthermore contractors are not only focused on low cost solutions, but on solutions that are a combination of high functionality and low costs. This is also an advantage in terms of ‘constructability’. The contractor can integrate construction knowledge into his design.
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