Three months of planning for 48 hours of repair work on a critical piece of city infrastructure

City of Houston Southwest Pump Station

The City of Houston needed to replace large diameter water line valves inside of one of their critical pump stations—providing water to one third of the city’s infrastructure. The existing valves were old and in poor condition; however, due to its importance, this pump station couldn’t be taken offline.

Our team spent over three months planning the repair operation which would only last 48 hours. We coordinated with City of Houston Drinking Water Operations and our contractor, working the schedule down to the hour the repairs would be done. We verified all required tools and materials were on-site and ready once we were given approval to start construction. Additionally, we came up with contingency plans in the event something went wrong—which proved helpful, given one of the large diameter line stop valves broke during construction. The pump station that we couldn’t turn off had to be taken down in the middle of the night while broken valve was replaced. We were again given an extremely small window of time to turn the station back on.

Despite these challenges, our client was very impressed with the final site work. These repairs meant Houston now had hardened infrastructure that would last a long time without disruption to the water system. What was once an inflexible, problem pump station could now perform as it was originally designed.