Project: Sanitary Sewer Evaluation Survey (SSES)
Client: City of Atlanta - Watershed Management
Location: Atlanta, Georgia

Objective:

This project was initiated to inspect and fully
characterize the City of Atlanta’s sewer system utilizing current GPS and
inspection technologies. It included CCTV/Manhole inspections, dye testing,
smoke testing and overall QA/QC.

In 2003, as a partner of the joint venture Atlanta
Infrastructure Managers (AIM), Metals & Materials Engineers (MME) began
work with the City of Atlanta for CCTV inspection and cleaning of sewer lines
within the City of Atlanta limits. 
While providing these services, MME has also aided the City engineers in
updating their existing maps with regard to connectivity errors, adding manholes
detected in the field, removing non-existent manholes, etc.  Manhole inspections, smoke testing
data,  dye testing data, CCTV
videos and metrology were painstakingly cross-referenced with GPS information
to provide QA/QC of system information. 

Since contract inception, MME has CCTV inspected
approximately 400,000 linear feet of sewer main and service laterals in
difficult easements, subdivisions, and busy DOT roads.  Service laterals as small as 4-inches
in diameter to trunk lines as large as 60” in diameter have been fully cleaned
and inspected quickly and efficiently with the minimum of impact to the local
residents.  During day-to-day
operations, MME field crews have located and physically raised many buried
manholes and provided point repair services to limit the impact of I&I
during the study.  System
rehabilitation occurs after system characterization under a different contract,
but these timely repairs can offset much of the I&I impact while waiting
for contract logistics to resolve.

Additionally, our Quality Group has realigned the City maps
by resolving countless manhole locations and connectivity mistakes and
oversights.  Utilizing a true
contractor-municipality team approach, the City has utilized MME’s digital
video files and WRc coding system to optimize the accessibility of critical
sewer characteristics for effective strategic planning and timely emergency
response.