Honored treatment: Alcoa plant receives award for excellence in engineering

From Staff and Wire Reports

The new Alcoa Water Treatment Plant garnered an Honor Award for Engineering Excellence in the statewide 2008 Engineering Excellence Awards competition sponsored by the American Council of Engineering Companies of Tennessee (ACEC of Tennessee). The award was presented to Smith Seckman Reid Inc. of Nashville in the water and wastewater competition category.

Knoxville engineering firm S ME also received an Honor Award for the firm's work in realigning and restoring 1,400 feet of Love Creek, a tributary and an area of wetlands located on a Wal-Mart store expansion site in Knoxville.

The awards were announced March 4 in Nashville before an audience of more than 250 Tennessee engineers, business and civic leaders, and state, city and county officials from across the state.

In addition, Ross Bryan Associates Inc. of Nashville received an Honor Award for structural engineering for its work on the new club level and concourses at Neyland Stadium. "ACEC of Tennessee sponsors the annual Engineering Excellence Awards competition to spotlight the important contributions that Tennessee engineering firms make to the health, safety and quality of life of the people in Tennessee, the nation and throughout the world," said David Harrell, Engineering Excellence Awards program chair and vice president at Knoxville engineering firm Vaughn and Melton.

State of the art

The Alcoa Water Treatment Plant is a state-of-the-art membrane filtration water plant that includes the latest technology for the effective treatment, distribution and monitoring of the finished water provided to city customers.

Smith Seckman Reid worked with Alcoa city officials through a process of selecting treatment processes that have proven to be safer, more efficient and cost effective so that customers receive the best possible drinking water for a reasonable price. A complex Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system monitors and controls all aspects of the treatment processes. The entire project was designed to allow future expansion with minimal construction.

The Neyland Stadium new club level and concourses project involved the addition of 400 premium seats, the new 13,000-square-foot club level lounge and 20,000-square-feet of new concourses, concession stands and restrooms. Ross Bryan Associates was a project partner with McCarty Holsaple McCarty Architects Inc. Ross Bryan provided structural engineering inspection, analysis, design and construction administration services for renovation of portions of the stadium and conceived a method to add the new club level. In addition to its award for the Alcoa Water Treatment Plant, Smith Seckman Reid received an Honor Award for a building technology systems project completed at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville.

Independent judges

The awards were presented based on the decisions of an independent panel of judges.

The 2008 judges were Susan Duvenhage, President/CEO, Adventure Science Center, Nashville; Wain Gaskins, PE, Director of Engineering Department, city of Memphis; David Huddleston, dean of the College of Engineering, Tennessee Tech University, Cookeville; Marilyn Lewis, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Louisville District; Kimberly McClurkin, Department of Public Works, city of Chattanooga; Diane Neighbors, vice mayor, metro government of Nashville and Davidson County; Herschell Parker, curator/collections manager, Adventure Science Center (proxy), Nashville; and Greg Reed, associate vice chancellor for research, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.