For this year’s holiday greeting, multiple Dewberry offices got involved by building models to create a community. To showcase the work my team does in the Raleigh office, we built a wastewater treatment plant for the neighborhood. Take a close look when you watch the video and you’ll see:
- Membrane facility
- Reclaim water pumping station
- Solid facilities
- Anaerobic digesters
- Thickening building
- Dewatering and drying building
- Digester gas utilization building
- Solar farm
To construct each section, we used materials we found around the office including duct tape, pipe cleaners, and paper clip boxes.
Creating a Conversation Piece
This experience gave us an opportunity to talk though current issues in wastewater treatment plant design, such as energy recovery (solar farm, digester gas utilization) and membrane facilities. We tried to make this as similar as possible to an actual facility by including energy neutral features like the solar farm.
A Little Friendly Competition
Our office had two groups constructing different models. The MEP group, led by Shepard Hockaday, built the central energy plant. During our friendly office competition we would peak in on the other team’s progress to make sure our model was up to par. I think both models turned out excellent! They each provide a good depiction of what these facilities might look like in the real world. For the wastewater treatment plant, I was pleased with how we were able to make it look realistic while using materials from around the office.
