Water Treatment

Hawkins is widely recognized as the leading law firm nationally providing procurement and contract legal advisory services for water treatment plants.  We drafted and negotiated, for the City of Seattle, the first major 20-year design-build-operate-maintain contract in the country for a large-scale water treatment project procured on a competitive proposal basis.  Since then, our firm has served as owner’s lead counsel on more than 40 other design-build based and CMAR contracts for major water treatment facilities.  Our water treatment project clients have included Phoenix, San Antonio, Santa Fe, San Diego County Water Authority, Davis-Woodland, Hialeah-Miami, San Jose, New York City and MWRA (Boston).  In most cases, the project constituted the first major public work, as well as the first major water treatment facility, procured by the owner on an alternative project delivery or P3 basis.  Our water practice group attorneys are involved on a regular basis in assisting municipal utility owners with preparing business cases to determine the most appropriate project delivery method for particular projects under applicable law.  We have developed special expertise working with technical advisors in establishing commercially reasonable detailed project acceptance standards and long term performance guarantees for new water treatment plants in performance-based DB, DBOM and P3 projects.