B 4.0
Lift and pump stations
Wet wells, valve vaults, pumps, piping, electrical and controls, and the standby power that decides what happens to a collection system when the grid goes down.
SS, Sanitary sewer Typical span 4–12 months
A lift station is the smallest thing in a collection system and the one most likely to put sewage in a creek.
The reason is structural to how it works. A gravity sewer fails slowly and visibly. A lift station fails instantly and invisibly: the pumps stop, the wet well fills, and the only thing between that and an overflow is the storage volume, the alarm path and how fast somebody gets there. Every one of those is a construction decision as much as a design one.
So the parts of this scope that matter most are the parts nobody photographs. Whether the standby generator actually starts and carries the load, rather than starting on a no-load monthly test. Whether the alarm reaches a human at three in the morning. Whether a pump can be pulled by two people with the equipment the district actually owns, or whether it needs a crane nobody budgeted for.
Confined-space entry governs almost everything here. A wet well is a permit-required confined space with an atmosphere that can kill, and every entry is attended, monitored and set up for rescue before anybody goes in.
A generator that runs ten minutes unloaded every month has proved that it starts. It has not proved it can carry the station through a two-day outage in February. Load-bank testing at commissioning is in our scope and the result is a written record, because the week it is needed is not the week to find out.
Define these before a proposal
- Capacity and storage
- Design flow, peak flow and the wet-well storage between pump-off and an overflow. That volume is the response time.
- Pump configuration
- Submersible or dry pit, duty and standby arrangement, and whether a pump can be pulled with the district's own equipment.
- Controls and alarm path
- Level control, the control narrative, SCADA integration, and who is actually notified when it alarms.
- Standby power
- Generator, automatic transfer switch, fuel, and whether it has been load-tested rather than only started.
- Odour and corrosion
- Hydrogen sulphide is the reason concrete and metal fail early in a wet well, and the reason coatings and ventilation are not optional.
What you receive
Commissioning record, control narrative verification, O&M manuals
In the format the owner's records require, agreed at proposal stage rather than discovered at closeout. What happens at each stage is set out on the process page.
B 4.1 Pay items
What this scope costs, by the unit
Broken out the way an engineer's estimate breaks it out, so a district can assemble a realistic figure rather than guess at a lump sum. The full sheet is on the unit price page.
| Item | Description | Unit | Unit price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12.10 | Wet well, 8′ diameter, 20–30′ deep Precast or cast-in-place, coated, with dewatering | EA | $145,000–$385,000 |
| 12.20 | Valve vault and piping Vault, valves, check valves, piping, supports | EA | $68,000–$165,000 |
| 12.30 | Submersible pumps, set and tested Per pump, guide rails, base elbow, cabling | EA | $24,000–$86,000 |
| 12.40 | Electrical service and controls Service, control panel, level control, wiring | LS | $95,000–$280,000 |
| 12.50 | SCADA integration and alarm path Points to the owner's system, tested end to end | LS | $28,000–$95,000 |
| 12.60 | Standby generator and transfer switch Set, connected, commissioned, load-bank tested | LS | $78,000–$240,000 |
| 12.70 | Odour control Carbon or biological, per installation | LS | $42,000–$180,000 |
| 12.80 | Site work, fencing and access Drive, turnaround, fencing, grading, drainage | LS | $46,000–$155,000 |
Row bands are the APWA uniform colour code for what is in the pipe: W, Potable water potable water, SS, Sanitary sewer sanitary sewer, unbanded where a line covers both or neither. Units are LF linear foot, EA each, CY cubic yard, SY square yard, SF square foot, LS lump sum, MO month, DAY day.
Unit prices are USD planning ranges for the Colorado front range, exclude engineering, surveying, permitting, bonds, insurance, owner-furnished materials, easement and right-of-way costs and any applicable tax, and assume normal access and no undisclosed site conditions. They are published so a district can size a project before it spends money on design. They are planning ranges, not a bid. Reviewed October 2026. A price for your project comes from a bid or a proposal against a defined scope. See the disclaimer.
B 4.2 Questions
Questions about this scope
Specific to this scope. The general ones — bidding, bonding, insurance, weather days, pay applications, retainage — are on the FAQ page.
How much wet-well storage is enough?
That is a design question rather than a construction one, but it is worth understanding as an owner because it is really a question about response time. The usable volume between the pump-off level and an overflow, divided by the inflow, is how long somebody has to get there after both pumps stop. If that number is twenty minutes and your on-call operator is forty minutes away, no amount of construction quality fixes it.
Does the alarm actually reach anybody?
That is the question we test at commissioning, end to end, rather than assuming. A level alarm that lights a panel nobody is looking at is not an alarm. We verify that the point reaches the owner's SCADA, that it generates the notification it is supposed to, and that the notification arrives at the person who is on call — and the test result is part of the closeout package.
Why do wet wells need coating?
Hydrogen sulphide. In a wet well it converts to sulphuric acid on damp concrete surfaces above the waterline and eats the concrete and any exposed metal. An uncoated wet well in an aggressive system can lose structural cover in well under a couple of decades. Coating is cheap when the structure is new and accessible, and very expensive later.
Can you rehabilitate an existing station rather than replace it?
Frequently, and it is often the better answer. Structure rehabilitation and coating, pump and control replacement, and a new generator inside an existing wet well can extend a station a long way for a fraction of replacement cost. What decides it is the condition of the structure itself and whether the hydraulics still suit the system it now serves. A condition assessment answers that before anybody commits to a number.
B 0.0 The other scopes
The rest of the schedule of work
New water and wastewater treatment structures and process systems, from excavation and cast-in-place concrete through mechanical installation, commissioning and operator training.
- You receive
- Commissioning and startup records, O&M manuals, operator training
Rebuilding a process train while the plant keeps meeting its permit. Bypass pumping, staged demolition, tie-ins scheduled at low flow, and a written procedure for every hour the plant is vulnerable.
- You receive
- Bypass plan, shutdown and tie-in procedures, as-built record
Gravity sewer, water mains and force mains in open cut and by trenchless methods, including the surface restoration that is what a resident actually sees when it is finished.
- You receive
- Pressure and leakage tests, CCTV inspection, record drawings
Cast-in-place water-retaining concrete, vaults, tanks, headworks, grading, drainage and restoration — the civil scope that everything mechanical is bolted to.
- You receive
- Concrete test records, hydrostatic testing, record drawings
Send the drawings, or describe the problem
Telephone with what the facility has to do, what it does now, and the date it has to be finished. We will tell you what has to be defined before anyone can price it, what carries the flow while the work happens, and what the sequence would have to look like.
RN Civil Construction, LLC · 6025 S Quebec St, Englewood, CO 80111