Fuss & O’Neill provided civil engineering services to the DBVW Architects team for a new three-story medical facility that replaced the 1950s Varley building.

The site work occupied approximately eight acres for reconstruction. This included new parking areas, roadways, significantly-improved pedestrian facilities, and patient outdoor recreation areas. The design used low-impact stormwater practices and water-quality retrofits to eliminate stormwater connections to the sanitary sewer system as well as to comply with the State’s stormwater quality standards and the 2012 International Green Construction Code.

We minimized the project’s infrastructure costs by rehabilitating existing paved parking areas and converting portions of the site’s impervious surfaces to low-maintenance open space meadow and landscaping. The meadow was an integral part of the stormwater management approach to reduce runoff and minimize long-term maintenance costs. This approach incorporated additional soft controls, such as vegetated filter strips, dry swales, and bioretention cells, to filter and reduce runoff while complying with the Rhode Island Stormwater Manual.