...1917 and 1936, respectively; the $4 Billion Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment plant expansion in Greenpoint, which will raise the capacity of what is already the city’s largest wastewater treatment plant to 700 mgd during wet weather storms; the $2.8 billion Croton Water Filtration Plant, which employs more than 1,000 workers a day and will culminate in a 290-million-gallon-per-day facility built 100 ft below grade in just 51 months; and the $1.4 billion, 160,000-sq-ft Catskill-Delaware Ultra-violet Disinfection plant, which, when completed will be 10 times the size of any similar facility previously built.

“Through this down economy we’ve still managed to put out a couple billion dollars worth of work or more a year. It’s diverse work, some of it’s large, some of it’s small, it covers a lot of different contractors and employs a lot of people. I think people take notice of that.”

“If you take just our major projects, the amount of work that we have going on right now is much more than City Water Tunnel No. 1 and City Water Tunnel No. 2 combined,” says Holloway. The good side of that is that we’re doing a lot of work and we’re an economic driver. In an economic picture that is improving but still isn’t looking so great, you could look at the DEP as a bright spot for the simple reason that we’re doing work.”

New York Construction recently sat down with Holloway and a team of his senior staff members – Mueller, Michael Borsykowsky, assistant commissioner for engineering management; Kathryn Mallon, assistant commissioner for in-house design and support; and Bernard Daly, executive construction manager on the Croton plant – to discuss the meaning of being named Owner of the Year, as well as the DEP’s future as one of the region’s pre-eminent builders while the economy is still navigating difficult waters.

New York Construction: Why do you think you won – why did the industry choose you as its owner of the year?

Jim Mueller: I think it’s a combination of volume of work, but also a function of us trying to improve the way we do business in terms of managing contracts and streamlining our business processes in an effort to make the DEP a better client. I wouldn’t say we’re done, but I think we can say that we’re done starting the process. It’s kind of the end of the beginning. Our engagement of staff both here and with our 300-plus engineers who are out there designing and managing the work, I think people in the construction industry are beginning to see that manifest itself in terms of progress on jobs, problems getting knocked down and schedules starting to move. Like I said, I don’t think we’re done by a long shot, but I think it’s that combination of getting the work out there steadily and trying to constantly improve the way we manage it.

Bernard Daly: I think we’re also one of the safer owners out there.

Michael Borsykowsky: Definitely. It’s our highest priority. Our program has matured quite a bit in that regard. We’ve staffed up to a high level of competency within the agency. We’re also doing a much better job of auditing our sites so people know that we have active site representatives from the contractors that are ensuring that work is done with the written health and safety plans. We also have our own in-house people and third party people so we can send down and audit the sites. That’s had a real significant impact. Our numbers are very good. I think we still have some areas that could use improvement but considering the amount of manpower we have out there now and heavy equipment we have in play our safety performance has been very successful.

BD: We have requirements in the contracts that the firms have to have a site safety professional on site. Then we require the CM have its own safety staff. So we really have a very robust safety program in place.

MB: And it’s very important that we do. We have, what, 17, 18 cranes in place at Croton alone? [Safety] has to be a big part of our focus.

JM: I think it’s also been important for us to work on forging good relationships with other agencies – I’m talking about departments like the fire department or the Department of Buildings or ConEd. We’ve made a concerted effort at all levels – from our safety program to our construction program to our design program – to make sure we’re coordinating all that very well with our oversight and I think it’s really paying off in terms of streamlining projects and solving issues instead of having them linger or having fingers being pointed.

NYC: You mentioned the volume of work you have in the ground right now. Has this agency ever seen anything like this?

Commissioner Caswell F. Holloway: We’re in a period of unprecedented construction at the DEP, by any measure. Whether you’re talking the number of projects, the size of projects, the amount of committed capital dollars, the number of construction workers, the burn rate we’re going through on a daily basis – you name it – there’s a...