AMEC-BCI has direct and noteworthy experience in virtually every type of natural Florida watershed physiography and waterbody type, freshwater and estuarine, with unique knowledge of sub-tropical streams. Recognized as an industry pioneer in Integrated Water Management, AMEC-BCI was one of the original firms to offer solutions which successfully blend the science and engineering aspects of watershed master planning and floodplain management. Within our project designs we excel at considering both watershed and receiving water dynamics and associated restoration requirements.

These types of projects require rigorous compliance with agency and FEMA developed guidelines and specifications for Watershed Management Planning as well as FEMA’s Guidelines and Specifications for Flood Hazard Mapping Partners. Our watershed management plans address water quality assessments, flood hazard mitigation, and the stream stabilization/restoration aspects of flood-prone areas. AMEC-BCI professionals use this information as the basis for the integrated solutions that will resolve our clients’ problems. We have also worked on assessing alternatives and developing project designs for multiple stormwater retrofit projects designed to improve the level of service within the watershed for both water quality treatment and flooding. Our staff is accustomed to balancing all of the elements that make for a healthy, safe, and productive watershed. We link a comprehensive understanding of local climatology and watershed behavior with community needs, regulatory and legal requirements, and fiscal constraints to create a holistic and harmonious plan.

AMEC-BCI’s staff members have the expertise and experience necessary in order to make critical MFL decisions – this expertise includes biological, hydrological, hydraulic, and statistical modeling, as well as water quality and water quantity specializations. We are aided by our unique knowledge of Florida streams, based on our original research, as well as our specialized experience in vegetative and soil analysis and TMDL and BMAP development activities. AMEC-BCI’s Water Resources staff collectively has experience with all waterbody types as we have worked across the suite including lakes, rivers, estuaries, and wetlands; from clear water to highly colored, freshwater to estuarine and the plant communities and soil types typical of these systems. Our wetland experience includes cypress strands and domes, hardwood swamps, wet prairies, and freshwater marshes while our estuarine and freshwater riverine experience includes plant communities spanning from freshwater/brackish species to seagrasses.

AMEC-BCI’s expertise in the key discipline areas of TMDL, NPDES, MFL, and NNC support services are unprecedented. AMEC-BCI staff members are the foremost experts in the region in each of these respective fields and as a consulting firm we are immersed in the “big picture” knowledge of the regulatory programs driving compliance needs. We have direct experience conceiving, establishing and managing a variety of water quality and hydrology monitoring networks at operating mines designed to help direct operational decisions, conceive and prioritize capital improvement alternatives, and document environmental outcomes.

AMEC-BCI is home to water resource professionals that have provided expertise in BMAP and TMDL development and compliance as well as stormwater retrofit for nearly three decades. AMEC-BCI is considered a leading expert in this area, having assisted state and local government agencies in designing, developing, constructing, maintaining, and inspecting thousands of the stormwater facilities in place today.  Our in-house TMDL, BMAP, and Best Management Practice (BMP) experts are well known for their extensive knowledge and varying methodologies for adeptly providing water quality and drainage solutions.

Modeling provides a global approach to understanding the behavior of hydrologic systems which enables us to make better predictions and overcome the major challenges in water resources management. Modeling requires in-depth scientific knowledge of hydrology, strong mathematical and statistical skills, and proficiency in a range of software codes necessary to accurately and efficiently calculate hydrodynamic and hydraulic variables related to flow volume, water levels, and hydropattern.

AMEC-BCI is among the best engineering firms available to provide high caliber modeling expertise. We provide our clients with a combination of specialists highly knowledgeable of the environmental setting and equally efficient with the necessary software. Our water resource engineers are some of the most skilled modelers working in the field today having developed in-house software models and written groundbreaking publications, journal articles and reports. They are accomplished 2-D and 3-D modelers proficient in all applicable codes including EFDC, RMA-2, and CH3D.

Sediment removal, lake restoration, and material handling projects are considered to be Flagship Services of AMEC-BCI as we have been instrumental in the completion of critical dredging and sediment removal projects for more than 25 years. Our experience encompasses the full range of project types - rural and urban, fresh water and marine, lake, estuary, and canal maintenance and restoration and includes the full gamut of sediment handling and management logistics. Our corporate dredging resume is expansive and our successful projects represent millions of cubic yards of hydraulically dredged material.

AMEC-BCI’s projects have included everything from simple dredge and dump projects to complex projects located within highly urbanized land-limited settings requiring various material separation, dewatering and associated water treatment processes. AMEC-BCI remains at the forefront of dredging and sediment removal techniques and methodologies. We continue to study and utilize a variety of sediment dewatering techniques including chemical, physical, and hybrid methods. Some have included hydrocyclones, filter presses, ring clarifiers, rotating screens, sand separation devices and other dewatering techniques and slurry handling systems. We have artfully designed storage/impoundment areas and spoils handling systems for more than 200 million cubic yards of sediment and mine tailings and have developed sediment isolation systems to control the accumulation of dredge sediments. Our vast experience and broad exposure to organic and fine grained materials from dozens of projects are instrumental in establishing optimum dewatering and materials handling specifications.

Home to one of the leading experts in fluvial geomorphology in the southeastern United States, AMEC-BCI is called upon to perform stream stabilization, modeling, and reconstruction design for a diversity of clients including private land owners, government agencies, mine operators, and public corporations. AMEC-BCI understands stream channels and wetlands are integral to a larger and more complex ecosystem and their importance in sustaining water quality and habitat. AMEC-BCI is considered to be a leader in using innovative natural channel designs and fluvial geomorphologic approaches to assess and restore streams in coastal plain environments. These approaches are often carefully integrated into traditional engineering assessments such as event modeling, hydraulic system design, and integrated groundwater-surface water hydrology simulations.

AMEC-BCI has comprised a team of highly dedicated and specialized experts in stream and channel restoration, aptly recognized as the “Stream Team”. The Stream Team has successfully provided numerous private and public landowners throughout Florida with stream studies and restoration designs based on original ground-breaking research on the fluvial geomorphology of wadable streams in peninsular Florida conceived and directed by Dr. John Kiefer, PE, PWS, the region’s leading expert in fluvial geomorphology. This extensive research on streams has led to the development of a new classification system for Florida streams based largely on the degree of physical versus biological controls on the geomorphology and associated biological systems within the stream channel and its riparian corridor. As a result of the stream studies, our Stream Team has developed a set of empirical tools to greatly aid in the assessment and design of stream restoration projects and conservation management planning. AMEC-BCI is currently working on Florida stream restoration projects; and continues to remain on the forefront of this unique Water Resources discipline.

AMEC-BCI’s GIS Specialists provide extensive support for all of our areas of expertise and routinely develop data for numerous Water Resources related projects. Basic GIS support services include data collection, reprojection, and development and editing of various standard data layers such as roads, political boundaries, land use, soils, topography, hydrography and drainage basin delineations. Our GIS services also include inventory and environmental mapping for soils, wetlands and vegetation and statistical and volumetric analysis.

AMEC-BCI has created numerous Microsoft Access-based databases that provide robust user interfaces and data reports which are user-friendly and cost effective for our clients such as FDOT. These customized database applications utilize dynamic user-input forms and are tailored to allow our clients to retrieve and view their information based on their unique needs. The information stored in our custom databases can be viewed geographically by linking it with GIS technology which provides the use of many analytical tools either directly into ESRI ArcView or by using ESRI Arc Publisher.