Lawrence Stormwater Program Receives ACEC of Kansas Engineering Excellence Award

We're proud to announce that the Lawrence Stormwater System Identification, Assessment & Model Creation Program received an ACEC of Kansas Engineering Excellence Award in the Studies, Research, and Consulting Engineering Services Category. The city of Lawrence, Kansas, TREKK Design Group and Burns & McDonnell collaborated to establish a framework to help the city better understand its stormwater system and enhance its resiliency for the future.

Lawrence’s stormwater network includes 280 miles of stormwater pipe and more than 17,600 structures across nearly 35 square miles. While the city had an idea of its stormwater assets and locations, it wanted a more accurate inventory of these assets and their condition to develop a strategic capital improvement plan to rehabilitate the system, address flooding issues and meet regulatory requirements.

In 2021, with the help of TREKK and partner Burns & McDonnell, the city launched the Stormwater System Identification, Assessment and Modeling project, an innovative approach to identifying stormwater assets condition, criticality and serviceability. The project sought to standardize and modernize how data would be collected, assessed, stored and used, establishing a framework to help Lawrence better understand the location and condition of its stormwater assets and facilitate comprehensive capital planning efforts to make future improvements.

Through innovative technology like the use of the TREKK360 camera, field crews from TREKK and Lawrence have together inspected and assessed more than 11,000 structures and provided CCTV on more than 600,000 linear feet of storm pipe to date. TREKK360 is a lighter and more versatile tool for 360-degree underground structure assessments.

“The TREKK360 camera has significantly improved our efficiency in field data collection,” said TREKK Associate Partner, Lucas Gillen, PE. “Because it doesn’t require confined space entry, it allows our crews to work safer and reduces the amount of time spent in the field, capturing more data in less time. Using TREKK360, we completed inspections of more than 1,000 structures in fewer than 60 days.”

The data collected is housed on the City’s GIS database, where each asset is rated based on its condition and prioritized for improvement. This data, along with modernized stormwater modeling methods, is helping the city identify and plan for cost-effective stormwater solutions.