|
PETROLEUM DIRECTORY: MWH focuses on the environment The company’s services range from environmental consulting to building environment-related facilities Alan Bailey Petroleum Directory Contributing Writer
In recent years people have become increasingly aware of the impact of human activity on the earth’s environment. As a result the development and operation of industrial, commercial, military or residential infrastructure now requires a high level of environmental knowledge, planning and design.
MWH Global Inc. addresses these environmental issues through its international business operations focused on environmental consulting, engineering and construction. MWH is a private, employee-owned company with about 6,000 employees worldwide.
“MWH was formed in 2002 by the amalgamation of two long-standing engineering firms, Montgomery Watson and Harza Engineering company,” Brett Jokela, MWH’s Alaska regional manager, told Petroleum News. Montgomery Watson’s history in civil environmental engineering stretched back to the 19th century, Jokela said. Harza Engineering had established an international reputation for the development of hydroelectric power stations.
The company’s staff of 50 in Anchorage, Alaska, forms part of MWH Americas Inc., the division of MWH Global that supports North and South America. Alaska clients include local, state and federal government; the oil and gas industry and the mining industry. Environmental compliance Compliance with environmental standards and regulations forms a critical part of any environmentally responsible activity. And through environmental assessments, planning and monitoring MWH’s experts can help clients understand the environmental impacts of new developments, obtain permits and assure operational compliance.
Janet Sheldon, a senior project manager with MWH, said that a major component of the company’s compliance work involves facilitating a dialogue between clients and the regulatory authorities. Doug Quist, a senior chemist with MWH, sees this facilitation as a key benefit for the clients.
“When we go in and talk about a new environmental permit or a new wastewater discharge permit with the agency folks they know what we’re about and we know what they’re about,” Quist said. “It’s clearly a benefit to the client, because ... we’ve already got a level of trust developed with the agency staff.”
Extensive experience of interpreting the regulations also enables MWH to help clients understand how the regulations apply in different situations.
“Sometimes, based on other projects we’ve done, we’ll know that there’s a different interpretation (of the regulations) that is valid that may not necessarily be common knowledge,” Quist said.
MWH also helps people assure the compliance of operational facilities through environmental monitoring and pollution prevention planning.
“You have to have an understanding of what the operations are,” Jokela said. “We work very closely with the crews working in the health and safety arena and with the project planners and with the operations managers ... so we can help determine what needs to be covered in the compliance documentation.” Engineering and construction The engineering and construction of facilities such as water supplies, water treatment plants and power plants form major components of MWH’s services.
In Alaska the company does engineering design and is also a licensed general contractor. For example, the company designed and built the potable water plant for the Milne Point oil field on the North Slope. MWH has also been upgrading water supply and water treatment facilities for rural Alaska villages.
The company has carried out a number of projects at the Valdez Marine Terminal to improve the efficiency of the processes at the terminal.
“We just completed a retrofit of the domestic wastewater treatment plant at the ... Marine Terminal, and we are continuing to assist in evaluating the Ballast Water Treatment functions and infrastructure,” Jokela said. “Last year we designed a new intake gallery and pump house for the water system at the terminal.”
Worldwide, MWH has designed and built a number of major hydroelectric power plants and, as Harza Engineering the company led the Susitna hydroelectric project in the early 1980s. More recently, the company has been involved in several hydropower projects in Alaska. For example, the company has been doing engineering and power re-evaluations for Chugach Electric Association to support the relicensing of the Cooper Lake project, Jokela said. Control systems MWH has developed a particular expertise in the design and construction of electronic control systems. These so-called SCADA systems enable the remote monitoring and control of facilities such as water supplies.
For example, the company has been designing a system for the Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility. The system will enable a single control room to monitor the operation of plant and facilities throughout the Anchorage area.
“There’ll be new SCADA and controls for three wastewater plants, two water plants and over 150 remote facilities, including water wells and pump stations,” Jokela said.
In one of the more novel applications of SCADA technology, MWH designed and built a system for reducing the fuel requirements at the FAA’s radio navigation beacon at Chandalar Lake in the southern foothills of the Brooks Range. Transporting diesel fuel to the beacon’s electricity generator at a remote site many miles from the nearest road had become an expensive operation for the FAA.
The new system involves the use of solar panels and a wind generator to supplement the diesel generator.
“It’s cut the fuel consumption dramatically by applying solar and wind power and by using SCADA technology to transfer information to Anchorage, where the FAA can monitor which of those units is actually operating, how much fuel is left and what the power production is,” Jokela said. Reclamation and remediation MWH can apply both its environmental expertise and its project skills when reclaiming or remediating land impacted by past activities.
For example, the company has participated in closure of disused reserve pits on Alaska’s North Slope. The need to do this reclamation work during the winter complicated the testing of the cleanup — winter sampling indicated that the sites were clean but visual inspections in the summer showed the existence of oil sheens.
“Essentially we went back and helped design a baseline study on how to avoid that (problem) by using a field methodology for laboratory samples,” Quist said.
This type of innovative approach to solving a sample testing issue evolved from an earlier project in which MWH remediated pollution from the old railroad roundhouse in Cordova. On that award-winning project natural organic material in the ground exceeded the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation’s standards for cleaning up manmade hydrocarbons. MWH chemists had to come up with a sample cleanup method that ADEC would accept, Bonnie McLean, health and safety manager for MWH, said.
MWH has also been cleaning up the so-called orphan exploratory sites on the North Slope.
“We’ve primarily dealt with all of the ones that are outside the Prudhoe Bay area — south towards the Brooks Range,” Jokela said.
On this particular project MWH had to develop a means of discharging water in open tundra without causing environmental damage. The company first had to work with the regulators to formulate an appropriate regulation.
“There hadn’t been any regulation of that (type of) discharge in the past,” Jokela said.
MWH then went on to design and build a portable water discharge system that would operate within the terms of the regulation.
With his company’s ability to cover the gamut of environmental services, from consulting to engineering and construction, Jokela sees a very positive future for MWH. However, with the gradual completion of cleanup projects he anticipates an increasing proportion of the workload focusing on damage prevention rather than damage remediation.
“(The business) will certainly be changing and we’ll be reacting to those changes,” Jokela said. “But we’re very optimistic about our future in the state and the future of the company as a whole.”
Editor’s note: Alan Bailey owns Badger Productions in Anchorage, Alaska.
| 