Jacobs and PCL Land $1B San Francisco Wastewater Upgrade

By Elena Vasquez

A $1 billion upgrade is coming to the plant that treats nearly 80% of San Francisco's wastewater — and it has to happen without shutting the facility down.

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission picked a joint venture of Jacobs and PCL Construction as progressive design-build contractor for the Southeast Treatment Plant Nutrient Reduction project, according to a Wednesday news release. Dallas-based Jacobs and PCL will add advanced treatment capabilities designed to cut the volume of nutrients the plant discharges.

Why the plant can't simply close?

The facility handles roughly four out of every five gallons of the city's wastewater. Taking it offline, even temporarily, isn't on the table. Instead, crews will rebuild its core treatment processes around live operations.

Once complete, the new treatment process will meet updated state and federal environmental requirements, said Stephen Robinson, SFPUC assistant general manager, in the release.

"This ambitious project will remake the heart of San Francisco's largest treatment plant while that plant continues to operate," Robinson said. "Jacobs and PCL have worked with us on major wastewater projects before, and that experience will be critical as we take on a project of this size and complexity."

What else does the contract include?

Beyond the engineering work, Jacobs will support the SFPUC's Social Impact Partnership. That commitment covers investments in community health, education and workforce training and development initiatives, according to the release.

The award also deepens Jacobs' position in water infrastructure — a sector the firm flagged as a key growth area in its most recent earnings call.

California has been especially fertile ground for those wins:

• Jacobs and McCarthy Building Cos. began construction in June on a $185 million groundwater desalter expansion in Torrance, California.
• Jacobs delivered modernizations to the Donald C. Tillman Advanced Water Purification Facility in Los Angeles.
• The firm also modernized the San José-Santa Clara Regional Wastewater Facility in San José.

What's at stake?

For San Francisco, the project is a compliance exercise with real scale: a billion-dollar retrofit inside a plant that must keep running at near-full capacity the entire time. For Jacobs, it's another anchor contract in a water portfolio the company is actively building out in a state that keeps funding it — and the nutrient-reduction work at Southeast sets the terms for how the city's largest treatment asset performs under tightened environmental rules for decades.