Jacobs and PCL Construction will design and build the $1 billion Southeast Treatment Plant Nutrient Reduction Project in San Francisco, California. The progressive design-build joint venture, announced October 28, 2026, will add advanced nitrogen removal to the city’s largest wastewater plant, which treats nearly 80 percent of San Francisco’s wastewater, while the plant stays in operation.
The joint venture of Jacobs and PCL will deliver the project for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), which estimates the work at $1 billion in the award announcement, while its capital plan budgets $1.47 billion. The upgrade responds to the Bay Area Nutrient Watershed Permit adopted in 2024, which requires treatment plants across the region to cut the nitrogen they discharge into San Francisco Bay.
Regulation and scarcity are pushing water treatment spending in different directions across the United States. In Arizona, the TSMC Arizona industrial water recycling facility is a 15-acre plant in north Phoenix designed to recycle 85 percent of the campus’s industrial wastewater at startup, rising to 90 percent or more, with operations scheduled for 2028. Both projects turn regulatory and supply pressure into long-lead treatment capacity, though the Phoenix plant targets 2028 while the San Francisco contract term runs 13 years and three months.
Southeast Treatment Plant Nutrient Reduction Project Scope Adds Biological Nutrient Removal
SFPUC’s baseline concept for the Southeast Treatment Plant Nutrient Reduction Project retrofits or replaces the plant’s high-purity oxygen activated sludge system to produce densified activated sludge, and adds a new biological nutrient removal system, according to SFPUC procurement documents. The same documents list modifications to existing aeration basins.
In addition, SFPUC told its local business advisory committee in August 2025 that the design must fit inside the existing site with minimal disruption to operations. The plant dates from 1952, and the Biosolids Digester Facilities Project, which SFPUC calls the largest project at the plant, is already under construction on the same site.
SFPUC’s request for qualifications cites a compliance figure of 3,300 kilograms of nitrogen a day and an SFPUC commitment of 15 milligrams per liter of total inorganic nitrogen in the effluent. Furthermore, final effluent limits take effect only if the Bayside aggregate mass load limit of 26,700 kilograms of nitrogen a day is exceeded.
Jacobs and PCL Joint Venture Delivers the Southeast Treatment Plant Nutrient Reduction Project
The SFPUC Commission awarded progressive design-build Contract DB-141 to Jacobs/PCL on February 10, 2026, with an initial award not to exceed $192.8 million, according to the commission minutes. Four commissioners voted in favor and one was excused.
The contract runs 4,850 calendar days, about 13 years and three months, and includes roughly four years of preconstruction services covering planning, design and environmental review. The minutes record the project as exempt from environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act. Counted from the February award alone, the term would reach about May 2039, although SFPUC has not published a notice to proceed date.
Jacobs/PCL is a San Francisco joint venture of Jacobs Project Management Company and PCL Construction, Inc. A protest from Sundt was denied at the February meeting, according to meeting coverage by Citizen Portal.
Jacobs referenced the award on its fiscal second quarter 2026 earnings call, describing the plant as the first major discharger to proactively meet the new Bay nitrogen limits. In its October 28 announcement, Jacobs said it will support SFPUC’s Social Impact Partnership through community health, education and workforce training. SFPUC Assistant General Manager Stephen Robinson said the project will “remake the heart of San Francisco’s largest treatment plant.”
Local contracting drew comment at the February meeting. Speakers from the San Francisco Hyper Local Building Trades Contractors Collective said community contractors had faced difficulty winning work on the digester project, according to the minutes.
Southeast Treatment Plant Nutrient Reduction Project Budget Figures Do Not Match
The $1 billion figure appears in the award announcement as an SFPUC estimate. Meanwhile, SFPUC’s nutrient removal project page states a budget of $1.47 billion, and the sources reviewed do not reconcile the two.
The initial $192.8 million award equals about 19 percent of the $1 billion headline, or roughly 13 percent of the $1.47 billion budget. As a result, most of the contract value will be set later, as design matures during the preconstruction phase.
SFPUC calls the project the largest and most consequential nutrient removal investment by a Bay Area utility to date. Additionally, its new Treasure Island plant, scheduled for completion in 2026, was designed with full-stream nitrogen removal capable of removing around 80 percent of nitrogen.
Project Overview
- Project Name: Southeast Treatment Plant Nutrient Reduction Project (Contract DB-141)
- Developer or Owner: San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC)
- Location: Southeast Treatment Plant, Bayview district, San Francisco, California
- Project Type: Wastewater nutrient removal upgrade within an operating plant
- Contract Value: Initial award not to exceed $192.8 million for preconstruction services (SFPUC Commission, February 10, 2026)
- Project Value: $1 billion (SFPUC estimate in the award announcement); $1.47 billion budgeted on SFPUC’s project page
- Contractor: Jacobs/PCL, a San Francisco joint venture of Jacobs Project Management Company and PCL Construction, Inc.
- Procurement Model: Progressive design-build
- Key Components: Retrofit or replacement of the high-purity oxygen activated sludge system; new biological nutrient removal system; aeration basin modifications (SFPUC baseline concept)
- Regulatory Driver: Bay Area Nutrient Watershed Permit (plant permit CA0038873)
- Contract Duration: 4,850 calendar days (about 13 years and three months), including about four years of preconstruction
- Plant Role: Treats nearly 80 percent of San Francisco’s wastewater; built in 1952
- Environmental Review: Exempt from CEQA (SFPUC Commission action)
- Status: Contract awarded February 10, 2026; joint venture announced October 28, 2026
Project Team
Owner and Client
Contractors
- Joint Venture: Jacobs/PCL
- Joint Venture Partner: Jacobs
- Joint Venture Partner: PCL Construction
Public Bodies
- Permit Authority: San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board
Related Coverage
- Comparison Project Owner: TSMC Arizona
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