On Monday, Apr. 6, the City of Altoona approved a $39.8 million contract with Story Construction to build a new 4 MGD water treatment plant, which will be the City’s fourth active treatment plant. Story Construction is serving the City as its Construction Manager at Risk, making the project the first water treatment plant in Iowa funded through the Drinking Water SRF program to be delivered through CM at Risk delivery. The lead design professional is McClure Engineering Company with Neumann Monson and IMEG serving as sub-consultants to McClure.
In May 2025, the City published a Notice of Intent and ensuing Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for CM at Risk services. Story Construction submitted qualifications, was deemed qualified to provide a proposal for CM at Risk services, interviewed with the City, and was ultimately selected by the City’s selection committee.
“We sought to take up CM at Risk delivery on this project because of the ability to collaborate with the construction and design teams during the design process,” said Dan Scott, Utilities Manager at the City of Altoona. “We ultimately selected Story Construction because of their specific project experience related to treatment plant work and their solid reputation in the industry overall.”
The water treatment plant is part of an overall water systems improvement. In addition to the plant, the City is also improving its raw water source capacity, raw water transmission mains, and finished water transmission mains. During design and preconstruction, the Story Construction team produced a cost opinion at 60% and 90% of design, guided layout and logistics of the new plant, and provided constructability input. In guiding site layout and logistics, the team ensured that design of the new plant is complementary to construction activities, ultimately shortening the expected duration of construction and lowering construction cost. Together with McClure, the Story Construction team also facilitated an early bid issuance in January for sitework and utilities, allowing those scopes of work to begin sooner and create room in the construction schedule for a required settling period prior to building structures.
“Having the Story team on board during design helped us maximize the effectiveness and constructability of design, ultimately so we could deliver the best value for the City of Altoona,” said Alex Potter, team leader at McClure.
The Story Construction team coordinated strategic packaging of scopes of work for bidding and led the prequalification process for interested bidders for each scope of work. Documents were released to prequalified bidders in January and bids were taken on Feb. 26, ultimately coming in 4.5% under the expected cost. Story Construction submitted a bid to self-perform concrete and exposed process piping work, and was ultimately the apparent low bidder, resulting in award of this package to Story to perform with its own crews.
The new plant will feature a new 220’ x 160’ treatment building containing three 12’ diameter x 42’ long pressure filters, four 12’ diameter x 16’ tall ion exchange softeners, and associated pumping to deliver 4 MGD of drinking water (expandable to 8 MGD in the future) to the fast-growing community. The project also includes a new 1.5-million-gallon ground storage reservoir, a new 2,530’ deep Jordan aquifer well co-located on the Water Treatment Plant site and associated low- and high-service pumps. Construction began in March and the new plant is scheduled to be online in January 2028.
“Because this is the first CM at Risk delivery of a water treatment facility using SRF financing in the State of Iowa, it has been invaluable to have a dependable and knowledgeable team capable of overcoming challenges along the way,” added Scott. “Having the combination of Story Construction and McClure has been tremendously helpful in working through this process, and we truly have experienced the collaboration that we were hoping for.”
Story Construction is also serving the City of Bondurant as its Construction Manager at Risk for a new water treatment plant.