Upper Margarita Channel Rio Puerto Nuevo Project

The focus on this $102.4 million project was to reduce flooding by replacing a heavily vegetated cross-section drainage channel with a 3600-foot-long by 30-foot-wide concrete channel. The new channel had to convey supercritical flows to a recently constructed stilling basin. Our experts provided innovative alternatives to the proposed design of this project. The primary accepted value engineering proposal was to use soil mixing to improve the soil bearing capacity under the channel section in place of excavating and hauling off unsuitable material and then replacing it with suitable granular material, saving $13 million. The result of implementing all accepted value engineering proposals was a savings to USACE of $19.9 million.