Highlights

• Pure Water Program to supply nearly 50% of San Diego’s future water through advanced purification and reuse.
• Program management key to navigating the city’s largest infrastructure initiative, from concept to construction.
• Early stakeholder engagement and regulatory coordination laid the foundation for public trust and successful execution.
• Seamless integration with existing systems ensured operational readiness, energy efficiency, and resilience.
• Model for sustainable cities—San Diego is setting the pace for water reuse innovation across the West Coast.

With the historic Pure Water Program, the City of San Diego is at the forefront of changing the West Coast’s water sustainability landscape. Key to the city’s success? Program management delivery.

As San Diego’s largest integrated infrastructure program, the Pure Water Program aims to produce 83 million gallons per day (MGD) of purified water, nearly half of metropolis’ supply. This new recycled water is a sustainable source, reducing the city’s reliance on the Colorado River and Northern California.

A massive and complex undertaking, the program includes several phases, with the $1.5 billion Phase 1 comprising technical studies; predesign and detailed design; and construction of new water purification facilities (WPFs), recycled water and product water pump stations, and several pipelines to produce 30 MGD of high-quality purified water. Commissioning is planned to start in 2026.

Brown and Caldwell Pure Water Program team members Diala Dandach, Bob Vilker, and Victor Occiano discuss with National Program Management Director Strauder Patton how the Pure Water program management approach brought San Diego’s water reuse vision to life and the key essentials for successful program management and delivery.

Q: How did you successfully take this vision and deliver it as a program?

Victor: Program management is a solution to help solve all the complexities in the system. So, translating San Diego’s ambitious vision to transform purified water infrastructure and sustainability into a program management approach was important to enable success.

The Pure Water team collaborated with the City to drive maturity into the delivery components, helping to manage essential activities, strengthen stakeholder connections, and address both unexpected challenges and foreseeable risks. It’s not just about overseeing a project; it’s about laying the groundwork for a sustainable future for our community.
By adopting a program management approach, we supported translating the city’s sustainability vision into practical actions— from planning to construction.

Q: What were some of the keys to successful delivery?

Diala: We played a critical role in developing the recycled water planning and feasibility studies, which evolved into the Pure Water Program, focusing on producing purified water and optimizing treatment processes. Today, we are on the program leadership team with San Diego and the Prime consultant, providing program technical advice to enable operation readiness, asset management, and commissioning so the new systems integrate smoothly into existing infrastructure. These are the keys to success on this program:

• Early planning and stakeholder engagement: Our team’s program advisory efforts supported the city as they negotiated with the EPA and other non-governmental organizations to ensure regulatory compliance, permits, and gaining support for the program. Our team also delivered a strategy to provide necessary stakeholder engagement and public outreach support.
• Program planning and initiation: BC helped set up the program management office (PMO) services, which included startup and initiation, where the Pure Water team developed a Program Management Plan, validated the Capital Improvement Program, and established the governance structure to manage the program and individual tasks.
• Clear visibility of benefits and outcomes: Our team supported transparency of performance benefits and outcomes through a program baseline resource-loaded schedule kept focus on the design activities.

Q: What kind of challenges did this program face?

Bob: This was a program that needed a higher-level coordination of activities to plan, develop, build, and integrate the change in treatment processes, including advanced treatment processes.

There were a lot of moving pieces! In collaboration with the City, the Pure Water team completed critical activities such as pilot testing, ensuring that the new processes can fully integrate with existing facilities, applying the appropriate technology, meeting current and anticipated regulatory requirements, evaluating and optimizing energy use and resource management, and facilitating stakeholder engagements.
The challenge was performing all these tasks in light of escalating supply chain challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected project timelines and costs.

Once complete, the San Diego Pure Water Program will be among the elite innovators of recycled water, building a more resilient future for generations to come. We are proud to support the city.