Few people pause to think about the journey their waste undergoes after it disappears down the drain, but where exactly does it go?
At the heart of every community, there is a sanitation district silently working to treat and manage the wastewater from millions of residents. The Orange County Sanitation District (OC San) is a public entity tasked with offering wastewater collection, treatment, and recycling services. It caters to a population exceeding 2.6 million individuals in the central and northwest regions of Orange County.
Troy Edwards, a UCI alumni with both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering, currently works at OC San. With his previous experience as a consultant and a professional engineering license, he works as an engineer in OC San’s planning department and is responsible for the asset management of OC San’s raw sewage collection system.
Wastewater collection starts from household plumbing and travels through the local city and OC San regional sewers, ultimately reaching OC San’s wastewater treatment plants. As part of OC San’s asset management team, he maintains and updates the collection system asset management plan by conducting condition assessments, investigating and proposing solutions to various asset issues, predicting potential failures, developing projects to address problems, estimating project costs, and recommending project timing before handing them off to OC San’s project management team. All of these efforts support the mission of OC San’s asset management team to improve resiliency and reliability while lowering lifecycle costs and maintaining a sufficient level of service.
A significant challenge the planning department faces is the prioritization of projects. As the team learns more about the conditions of all of its assets, a clearer understanding and more comprehensive data can help determine feasible changes to the scope, budget, and the schedule of future projects. Dealing with changing conditions can be also quite challenging, especially with the recent increases in construction costs.
“Construction costs have been dynamic in the last few years, usually in the upward trend. Looking down the pipeline for the next few years, things will be getting more expensive.” Even though projects might be more expensive than initially expected, Troy says there are contingency plans in place for higher construction costs. OC San’s asset management team plays a key role in recommending the best path forward.
Some advice that Troy has for current civil and environmental engineering students looking to get into the industry is for students to start getting involved with student-led campus organizations. He says these organizations have great opportunities to meet industry professionals. “The events and tours with ASCE definitely helped me land my first job. Go to events and try to meet some folks, and hopefully those connections can turn into something bigger down the line. You never know when you might interact with someone that could eventually lead to a job offer.”
