WaterHub at Emory Wins Grand Award in National Engineering Excellence Competition

WASHINGTON, DC–April 20, 2016—McKim & Creed has won a Grand Award of Engineering Excellence from the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) for its engineering work on the WaterHub® at Emory, an ecological water reclamation treatment facility at Emory University. The award was presented last evening at the ACEC Engineering Excellence Awards Banquet in Washington, DC, and is the 10th award the project has received since its commissioning in April 2015.

ACEC’s annual Engineering Excellence Awards (EEA) competition honors the year’s most outstanding engineering accomplishments. A panel of 25-30 judges from around the U.S. who represent a cross section of industry, government, academia and media, review and rate projects from around the world. The panel selected 24 top award winners—16 Honors Awards and 8 Grand Awards—based on uniqueness and innovative applications; future value to the engineering profession; perception by the public; social, economic, and sustainable development considerations; complexity; and successful fulfillment of client/owner’s needs, including schedule and budget.

“McKim & Creed is incredibly proud to be a part of such a phenomenal and unique project as the WaterHub at Emory,” said McKim & Creed Senior Vice President Tim Baldwin, PE, who accepted the award on behalf of McKim & Creed, along with President and CEO John T. Lucey, Jr., PE.

The first system of its kind installed in the United States, the WaterHub is a campus-scale water reclamation system serving Emory University’s main campus in Atlanta, Georgia. The WaterHub utilizes an eco-engineered treatment process to recycle nearly two-thirds of campus wastewater production – reducing the use of potable water by up to 40 percent. This new system creates a more resilient campus and mitigates risk by generating an alternative supply for critical heating and cooling operations, while consistently providing significant cost savings for utility operations.

The WaterHub at Emory was constructed at no capital expense to the end user under an innovative Water Purchase Agreement. Water savings produced by the project are used to pay off the cost of the facility. Since its commissioning in May 2015, the system has saved Emory over 40 million gallons of potable water. At full build-out, the WaterHub is capable of displacing 146 million gallons of water annually and is expected to save millions of dollars in water utility costs for the University over a 20-year period. Gina McCarthy, administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, toured the WaterHub at Emory last year, calling it “a model for us all.”

McKim & Creed served as the engineer on the design-build team for the WaterHub at Emory that included Sustainable Water as the project consultant and Reeves Young as the contractor.