Gwinnett’s Eastern Regional Infrastructure Project Wins Multiple Awards
Recognitions keep coming for the Gwinnett County Department of Water Resources (GCDWR) Eastern Regional Infrastructure Project.
This design-build project provides water, wastewater and sewer services and recreational trails to an area of innovative research, educational and residential development.
It is being praised in Georgia and nationally for its sustainability, engineering experience, and community/economic development contributions:
- Envision Silver award for sustainable infrastructure
- American Council of Engineering Companies of Georgia’s top Engineering Excellence Award
- American Society of Civil Engineers Georgia Section Project of Excellence Award in the Water/Wastewater category
- National Association of Counties Achievement Award for Community and Economic Development
Freese and Nichols served as the project’s overall design manager and lead designers for the buried infrastructure components on the JDS, Inc. design-build team. The project uniquely combines water/wastewater infrastructure and recreational amenities for eastern Gwinnett County.
“What an amazing project! The project itself is without question a signature project for FNI and the team,” said Carleton Sherrer, Freese and Nichol’s project manager for the Eastern Regional Infrastructure Project. “What makes it even more special is that it is another story in the long history of FNI working with JDS, dating back to the 1980s when Lee Freese and John D. Stephens became colleagues and friends. I’m personally honored to continue that legacy and am proud of how our team responded to the ups and downs along the way. What an honor to have been part of such an amazing team!”
The Project’s community assets
The $125 million Eastern Regional Infrastructure Project, completed through the design-build delivery method, officially opened in October 2024. It expands water and sewer capacity and provides trails to an area where residents have relied on septic systems.
As Gwinnett County developed 2050 master plans for water/sewer and parks and trails and planned for anticipated population growth in the Appalachian River Basin on the eastern border, a need for water, sewer, infrastructure and community space was recognized.
The Eastern Regional Infrastructure Project addresses these challenges with these components:
- 4 miles of new, modernized water mains
- 6 miles of new gravity sewers
- 7 miles of parallel wastewater force mains
- A 14-MGD (million-gallon day) regional wastewater pump station
- More than 5 miles of greenway/recreational trails and amenities
- Stormwater and roadway improvements
Assistant Project Manager Ryan Ellena led the design of the buried infrastructure components and permitting, which included obtaining more than 50 separate permits.
Freese and Nichols and JDS have collaborated on multiple design-build projects in the Atlanta area in recent years. Eastern Regional Infrastructure Project partners included Crowder Construction Company, Ardurra Group, Inc., Foresite Group, LLC, and 14 other firms providing specialized support.
Achieving Envision Silver Certification
Sustainability management was a key component of the Eastern Regional Infrastructure Project through developing a sustainability management plan and using sustainable practices.
Micah Taylor, an Envision Sustainability Professional (ENV SP) in our Atlanta office, led the Freese and Nichols Sustainability Team and coordinated sustainability efforts throughout design and construction. Trooper and Todd Buckingham, who also hold ENV SP designations, served in senior advisor/quality control roles for the sustainability efforts, attending sustainability workshops with GCDWR. Using their previous sustainability experience, they made recommendations on optimizing the project’s sustainability performance.
Micah led the preparation of the 26,000-page nomination submittal for the Envision award. Engineers Dekedre McGee and Garrett Wilhelm helped significantly with this submittal package, each spending hundreds of hours preparing the credit coversheets and supporting documents for more than six months.
To qualify for an Envision designation, an infrastructure project must achieve at least 20% of up to 1,000 applicable points across 64 different “sustainability indicators” in the Envision framework. This framework is designed to create cost-effective and resource-efficient infrastructure, promote resiliency and reduce negative impacts to a community and the environment.
For instance, this project’s pipe materials came from a company where more than 90% of the pipe materials are made from recycled materials. During the grading plan design, a conscious effort was made to reuse nearly all of the project’s excavated dirt to reduce off-site trucking and lower carbon emissions.
The Envision Silver award is a first for the GCDWR — and the fifth Envision award project Freese and Nichols has worked on across our regions.
“This was a huge milestone for Gwinnett County to be able to really demonstrate their commitment to sustainability to their customers and their community,” Micah said. “We want to help our clients make sure that they’re doing the right projects in the right way … and making sure that we’re keeping that focus on the greater good that these projects are doing in the communities.”
When the Envision Silver Award was announced in November 2024, the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure congratulated the GCDWR, JDS, Freese and Nichols and the entire project team for demonstrating “how the Eastern Regional Infrastructure Project fulfills vital community goals, achieves key milestones for sustainability and emphasizes risk mitigation and resilience.”