Rising Water and Wastewater Pipeline Construction Costs: A Survey of the DFW Metroplex Marketplace

Abstract

Water and wastewater pipeline construction costs have consistently increased over the years. However, pipeline construction costs recently have seen significant increases. Because demand in rehabilitation of existing pipelines and construction of new pipelines continues to grow, design engineers face a challenging task when asked to prepare an opinion of probable construction costs. The purpose of this paper is to identify trends and/or major differences within the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) metroplex, as well as discuss some of the factors influencing the increased costs of water and wastewater pipeline construction. We collected bid tabulation data from the past five years for 8- to 18-inch pipelines from 17 cities around the DFW metroplex. This data was used to compare the cost of pipeline construction based on size of pipeline, type of installation, and population of municipality. The type of installation examined included open cut and trenchless technology methods.