Santa Fe, NM ~ The Buckman Diversion project will provide a sustainable way for the City of Santa Fe, Santa Fe County and Las Campanas to access surface water supplies by diverting San Juan-Chama water and native Rio Grande water to reduce the reliance on over-taxed groundwater resources. After working more than 361,771 hours on project, the design-build team has completed many milestones.
Mike Raybourn, Design-Build Construction Manager, believes it’s the diversity of the people working on the project that contributes to the project’s innovations. “The people on this project come from all over the country and hail from two different companies, but these differences have helped make the project the success that it is,” Raybourn said.
This project presented several unique challenges. One of the main difficulties at the river and booster stations was working around the migration of the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher. The Southwestern Willow Flycatcher is an elusive migratory bird that journeys along the Rio Grande from April 15 to June 30. During this time, outdoor construction activities were halted throughout the migration.
One major milestone was turning the operations building over to the owner. Since then, the owner has moved on-site and started training employees while the team continues construction. The team also turned over all structures to the commissioning team. The turnover allows the commissioning team to test each system and work out any problems that may affect the plant’s startup. But the milestone making the big splash was when the JV team synchronized all 11 miles of 30-inch pipes to move raw river water from the Rio Grande River. The plant started up in January 2011 and is fully operational making clean water for the Owner.
