Anwar Alroomi and Sami Maalouf, Civil Engineering and Construction Management Cost Estimating Model of Construction of Marine Outfalls

A marine outfall is a pipeline or tunnel that discharges to the ocean such effluents as waste water, storm water, sewer overflows and cooling water, as well as brine from water desalination plants. There are some 330 marine outfalls around the world, and many were built decades before meticulous documentation became a common construction practice. There is considerable demand for marine outfalls today, and although they are very expensive to build, there are few studies estimating their cost because that is difficult to determine, particularly for outfalls built in the 1950s and 1960s. Last summer, six AIMS2 students, working with Anwar Alroomi and Sami Maalouf, collected data about marine outfalls worldwide as the foundation for creating a cost model. They contacted governments and, where possible, contractors and designers to gather information on the outfalls as a prelude to determining which factors, such as diameter, location, whether or not there are diffusers, etc. are the key ones affecting the cost of construction. The data collection is ongoing, and four students are now continuing the project, working on the literature review and mathematical model.

“The benefit of the model is that if an agency wants to construct a new marine outfall, they’ll know which information is significant and will affect cost, so they can easily estimate the cost of the marine outfall,” explains Alroomi. “Determining the cost is really essential.”