Dodson Industrial District Flood Protection

The Dodson Industrial District is a unique mix of industrial, commercial, and retail businesses in the southeast area of Kansas City, MO.  Due to the excessive and sudden flooding associated with this area, the US Army Corps of Engineers along with the City of Kansas City began a four-phase construction program to build over a mile of levee and floodwall system to reduce the flooding risk for this area. This levee is intended to provide 500-year protection for the industrial complex, allowing the businesses to qualify for flood insurance.

SVS provided an independent team and facilitated this 4-day Value Engineering Study on Phase 4 of this project.  The project scope consisted of 5,400 feet of 30-foot-high earthen levee and relocation of major utilities.  There were two major cost drivers in this project: foundation preparation and sanitary sewer relocation.  Nearly 50% of the project cost was related to foundation preparation on only one half of the levee reach.  This area was used as an uncontrolled dump site with an undetermined amount of buried trash.  To achieve a positive seepage cutoff and reduce the large volume of excavation and disposal cost, the Value Team recommended the use of a slurry cutoff wall.  This concept reduced the project cost by nearly 40%.

Environmentally, the Value Team was concerned about the function and sustainability of the design configuration.  The team recommended reconfiguring the primary borrow area to function as a wooded wetland and to obtain any additional borrow material from the riverbanks.  This riverbank excavation would be done in such a manner to reconnect the river to its overbank floodplain.  This allows the river to expand and lower the velocity before it begins scouring the channel.  This concept not only reduced the cost of borrow material for the levee section but also resulted in a more stable and thus sustainable river.

This study resulted in $9.2 million accepted savings.