Fulfillment Center – Public Improvements

Located in Bondurant, IA

Shive-Hattery recently finished the design phase of a 3.5 million square foot Amazon Fulfillment Center located in Bondurant, Iowa. Shive-Hattery has provided all the civil engineering for the project, both on the site and in the public right-of-way. As part of the project, Shive-Hattery completed full hydrologic and hydraulic models and designs for both the site and the adjacent public improvements. The most critical part of the public improvements was the $11 million construction package that was completely designed in three months.

The existing site consisted of approximately 90 acres of agricultural ground. With the proposed development’s addition of the building, parking lots, driveways, and sidewalks, approximately 52 acres of the watershed was converted to impervious surface. Additionally, the design of the public improvements resulted in the routing of 40 more acres through the site that were previously disconnected.

In order to protect the client’s assets and meet the requirements of the City of Bondurant, Shive-Hattery completed hydrologic and hydraulic modeling of the contributing watershed and proposed stormsewer and detention systems. Intakes, manholes, roof drain connections, and storm sewer pipes were sized to convey flows to large stormwater retention basins. Care was taken to provide adequate intakes and emergency overland flow routes in order to prevent ponding and flow depths that could damage the building, vehicles, or other property.

Three large stormwater detention basins were designed on the site. These basins receive runoff from the site, as well as the off-site areas added by the public improvements. In order to efficiently manage the large peak flows, these basins were designed as inter-connected ponds with a single discharge point off of the property. This modeling strategy allowed us to take advantage of the site topography by having the storm sewer network discharge flows into multiple basins without increasing the overall release rate. Future development within the watershed was also accounted for in the design of the basins, allowing further development of the property without the need to alter the storm water detention system.