GLA’s engineering team provides civil engineering services for all phases of a project from initial planning and feasibility studies through design, permitting, and construction. Our licensed professional engineers are known for producing cost-effective, biddable, and constructible plans and technical specifications. Drawing from our vast experience with construction support, we design our projects to work in the field, not just on paper, and to complement surrounding land uses and the local environment.
GLA’s civil engineering services include:
- Grading and earthwork calculations
- Lined containment structure design
- Municipal engineering
- Plans, specifications, and opinions of cost
- Stormwater engineering
- Water and wastewater engineering
We can provide plans, specifications, and opinions of cost for bid packages for any of the above types of projects.
Grading and Earthwork Calculations
GLA provides grading and earthwork calculations for infrastructure, transportation, solid waste, industrial, and mining sites utilizing the latest Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) and ArcGIS software, including use of AutoCAD’s Civil 3D. Grading plans and earthwork calculations are developed by our engineers and designers for initial planning, budgeting, permitting, site operations, and construction.
Lined containment structure design
GLA provides expert engineering solutions for all of our clients’ lined containment structures. Our team’s experience includes over 600 million square feet of geomembrane liner design and construction quality assurance (CQA) and over 100 million cubic yards of soil design/CQA. During the design process, we consider the containment structure application, the constructability, durability, and repairability of many different liner materials, the stability of the lined containment structure design, and our clients’ budgetary limits. Designs have been provided for a variety of climates and terrain from high rainfall, tropical sites to arid and semi-arid climates such as the western United States.
GLA’s lined containment structure experience includes:
- Wastewater and water treatment plants
- Landfills and composting facilities
- Dairies and rendering plants
- Mining facilities including tailings dams and heap leach pads
- Industrial ponds (including double-lined)
- Environmental mitigation ponds
- Recreational facilities
- Reservoirs and stockponds
Municipal Engineering
GLA recognizes the unique needs of small and growing communities. We serve these communities by offering valuable experience in community planning, Tax increment financing (TIF) district advising and expertise, Smart Growth comprehensive planning and funding programs. We prepare special assessments and user rate studies and help to administer capital improvement projects from conception to completion.
Our Municipal Engineering services include:
- Capital improvements planning
- Funding application assistance
- User rate studies
- Special assessments
- TIF Advising
- Planning Commission services
- Contract administration
- Construction project inspection services
- Roadway design, inventory, and rehabilitation
- Bike path planning and design
- Industrial parks
- Impact studies
- Community consensus building
Plans, specifications, and opinions of cost
Plans, specifications, and opinions of cost are the final set of bid package documents that are produced prior to the construction of a facility. They are vitally important to construction process as they will be the guiding documents for the contractor. A well prepared set of bid documents is a key component in a smooth, technically-defensible construction process.
A large portion of GLA’s professional services is the development of bid packages for competitively bid private and public works projects. Specializing in solid waste, mining, and municipal clients, our project team has prepared documents for the construction of both active and closed facilities worldwide. This experience, as well as our construction observation experience in the field, has refined our design abilities tremendously by allowing us to understand the design concepts that work well and those designs that are difficult to construct, unreliable, overly costly, and difficult to manage and maintain. This experience is key to preparing a reliable, constructible set of bid documents going into the construction process.
Stormwater Engineering
GLA is especially qualified to assess the capacity, functionality, and quality of stormwater systems and develop creative solutions to solve nuisance water problems caused by flooding and/or improper or insufficient infrastructure. By assessing the hydrologic conditions, our engineers identify and develop cost-effective solutions to stormwater management challenges for public entities, private water systems, landfills, and mines. We can provide solutions for water volume management, peak flow reduction, and water quality improvement by developing innovative solutions to infrastructure deficiencies through retrofitting of existing structures, creative thinking, and employing sustainability techniques.
Our engineers take care to meet all federal, state, and local stormwater design requirements, including flood control hydraulic analysis and point source discharge compliance requirements. We review and analyze sampling data to establish the significance of stormwater discharge constituents, supporting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit compliance, including Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) requirements and Construction General Permit requirements.
Water and Wastewater Engineering
Water distribution and wastewater collection and treatment are the cornerstone components of any community’s infrastructure. GLA’s professionals optimize the efficiency of these systems through a comprehensive approach to planning, design, and construction of needed facilities. From the planning and preliminary engineering report phase, through final design and construction, we combine practical scientific knowledge with standard engineering principles. We also assist communities and local governments in ensuring that their systems meet the rigorous regulatory compliance requirements of both state and federal regulatory agencies.
Our water and wastewater engineering includes:
- Supply wells and wellfield design
- Treatment plants
- Water tanks/towers, wells, conveyance, and distribution systems
- Pumping/booster stations
- Water reuse and reclamation
- Drinking water treatment
- Wastewater treatment
- Aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) and managed aquifer recharge (MAR)
- Brackish groundwater development and desalination engineering
- Collection system maintenance and rehabilitation