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Our team’s experience in designing roadway and utility projects on active corridors where there are homes, businesses, and motorists who must continue to use the roadway and facilities throughout construction will be useful as we prepare plans for the City’s undergrounding projects. Providing SUE services on design projects will help ensure the existing utilities will be identified early and accurately at the design stage and not later during construction; unknown utility conflicts can cause major delays, as well as unforeseen expenses. Delays such as these directly impact the cost of a project with change orders and inevitably the overall schedule is likewise impacted. This is an important piece of information to provide the contractors so that there are fewer unknowns during construction. The construction phase is limited to the summer months, so delays need to be avoided as do change orders. Therefore, we want to know as much about the proposed corridor as is reasonable and efficient so that the contractor knows what they will encounter during construction. This will also help us to achieve better competitive bids. Utility Coordination The City may want to work with the other providers to address other issues concurrently with this undergrounding project. The utility reconstruction effort can be performed concurrently with the installation of utility conduits. This would save the residents from additional construction inconveniences, save the cost of additional pavement repair if a separate project is performed, and may allow for a more reasonable approach to accommodating all of the utilities underground within the corridor. If multiple infrastructure systems are proposed to be constructed concurrently with this undergrounding project, we expect that they will be combined into a single project for the contractor. This may include several component sets of plans. Our team has the capability of designing all of these features. Nevertheless, we often work with other designers on component sets of plans that will be constructed within the same right-of-way together as one project. Therefore, we are comfortable working with other design firms that may be preparing a set of plans that will be combined and constructed all as one larger project. Landscape Architecture Our goal is that this undergrounding project protects the City’s landscape and does no damage. Therefore, our goals for this project include the following: 1. Do not mar the landscape; do not kill or damage trees or large hedges; retain residential privacy at the completion of undergrounding cables or when installing above-ground transformers and switch boxes. 2. Make aesthetically smart decisions in the placement of above-ground elements. 3. Minimize impact before, during and after construction so that we keep the City beautiful while we improve the aesthetics of the City as we remove the overhead utilities. Trenching for utilities is a technique that can literally cut roots of trees and hedges to the point of weakening or destroying the vegetation. As a result of the sandy soils and high-water table, root activity is largely within the first 3 feet. Due to this character above and below ground, our landscape survey and design will include an analysis where horizontal boring may be appropriate to go under or through root masses without affecting the trees and hedges, rather than destroying the existing vegetation with open trenching. Our team will take special care in working with FPL to locate above-ground facilities out of axial view corridors or sight lines. This will be important along the spine roads, especially as they curve. We will