The process of designing improvements to the flood protection system began in early 2010 with a design competition to pick a team of qualified engineering consultants who offered the best ideas and most-cost-effective approaches to achieving FEMA accreditation of area levee systems.  The design process is done in a series of steps leading to the production of construction drawings, which are used to secure the necessary permits and approvals and serve as the basis for cost estimates and construction bids.  The first step is the 30% submittal of construction drawings which describe the basic design concepts and lay out the preliminary design in sufficient detail to arrive at a reasonably reliable estimates of quantities of materials and labor that are used to build a cost estimate.

A “progress set” of drawings was submitted by our design team on March 1, 2011.  A summary of the design concepts included in the drawings can be found here.  These drawings are being subjected to a series of reviews by the area levee districts, the Corps of Engineers, and an independent group of peer reviewers that the Council has convened as part of a  “value engineering” exercise.  All of the information that comes from these reviews, as well as some additional analysis by the design team, will be incorporated into the final 30% design submittal that is due in early May, 2011.