NTMWD Named Engineering News-Record Texas & Louisiana Owner of the Year
The North Texas Municipal Water District was recently selected by one of nation’s most preeminent engineering and construction publications, Engineering News-Record (ENR), as the Texas-Louisiana Owner of the Year for the Bois d’Arc Lake project underway in Fannin County as well as numerous other concurrent programs.
In their in-depth article, Meeting the Water Needs of a Growing Texas Region, ENR shares how the 16,641-acre lake is progressing towards serving the fast-growing NTMWD service area of more than 2 million North Texas – a number that is expected to double by 2050. Numerous highlights on the $1.6B project are featured including how NTMWD worked hand-in-hand with a program manager to manage construction of the 2-mile long, 90-ft embankment dam and high service pump station, a new FM897 bridge and numerous road improvements, 60 miles of pipelines, water treatment plant located in Leonard, TX, and vast environmental improvements to 17,000 acres to offset the footprint of the lake.
NTMWD Executive Director Jenna Covington is quoted, “We are thankful for the strong working relationships with our contracting community, which are essential to live out our vision and to deliver on our mission of reliable, cost-effective services. We look forward to a continuing future of partnership to meet the needs of the communities we serve in this thriving region.”
With the massive size of the Bois d’Arc Lake undertaking, NTMWD brought on Fort Worth-based Freese & Nichols (FNI) as program manager once funding and permitting were in place. In addition to being involved from the earliest stages of Bois d’Arc Lake development, FNI handled a great deal of the design effort as well as management and assistance with required permitting.
Jeff Payne, Freese & Nichols’ chief operating officer, shared, “One thing that has been rewarding for us from a consultant standpoint is that we’ve had a seat at the table. It’s just a great collaborative environment that they created with the contractors and designers. We’ve all got that common goal in mind.”