The Value of the Envision System

The Envision Sustainable Infrastructure Rating System was released in 2012 to provide guidance on sustainable practices in civil infrastructure planning, design, construction, and long-term O&M. The use of Envision has increased dramatically over this six-year period, with significant embrace and use in the public water infrastructure sector. Envision provides a highly applicable framework for project teams that desire to implement a full-spectrum approach to utility planning. Although the rating system can be utilized to nationally recognize a project with an award, it is also well suited to provide a project team with guidance for enhanced decision-making capabilities during conceptual planning, and strengthen a project during design.

This presentation will provide a brief overview of the Envision framework, a summary of the recent updates between version 2 and version 3 (released 2018), and then a description of three brief case studies demonstrating how it can be leveraged for multiple types of public wastewater infrastructure capital projects at varying planning and design phases. The first case study will demonstrate how Envision was used to validate and expand upon non-cost criteria for evaluation and selection of a high-level planning alternative that assisted in defining the direction of a $5 billion wastewater capital improvement program. The second case study will demonstrate how use of Envision starting at design-phase kick-off enhanced the sustainability and overall design features of a typical wastewater pump station and force main replacement project. The last case study will demonstrate how use of Envision at a project’s late design-phase (60% design level) provided a functional mechanism to perform a sustainability audit and gap analysis for improvement of a collection system equalization design.