A major hurdle for a stormwater designer is ensuring the performance of the system after it’s been constructed. It doesn’t matter how good the design looks on paper, if it’s not constructed properly and within specification, the system is bound to clog or fail. In the 16 years that Construction EcoServices (CES) has been in business, we have seen this happen all too often, sometimes at the expense of the design firm or the end user. Those opportunities gave us the chance to learn how to prevent failure and ensure performance. We learned that stormwater management systems for GI need performance criteria, they help establish liability during construction. On a recent project in North Texas, the use of performance specifications prevented the premature failure of a newly installed bioretention system. More
