Tetra Tech’s engineering and architecture experts deliver sustainable designs that address infrastructure challenges in developing countries around the world.
As a leading implementing partner for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), Tetra Tech delivers safe and sustainable infrastructure that helps improve access to clean drinking water, sanitation, roads and bridges, health clinics, schools, government buildings, and reliable energy around the world. Our services are essential in helping governments and communities to reemerge from instability and conflict and to achieve their goals in health, education, economic growth, food security, and climate change.
We engage with stakeholders to provide capacity building through formal or on-the-job training, internships, mentorship programs, and integration of our work with host nation staff wherever possible. Our teams also work closely with the responsible local governments and institutions to build their financial and managerial capacity for operations and maintenance to ensure long-term sustainability of donor-funded infrastructure projects.
Our Expertise in Infrastructure
Tetra Tech’s approach ensures that planning activities remain focused on developing infrastructure that has long-term viability after donor organization financing has concluded. We use data related to climate resiliency, seismic requirements, and sustainability to determine project priorities, pre-requisites, and project phasing.
Planning activities that gain broad consensus from the community result in infrastructure that lasts for decades and maximizes the economic rate of return for the initial investment. Tetra Tech also recognizes the critical importance of gender inclusion towards achieving economic growth and seeks to involve women—as members of local engineering teams, community stakeholders, or local government representatives—in all aspects of infrastructure project planning activities.
On the USAID Liberia Municipal Water Project I, we worked with multilateral stakeholders to plan the design, implementation, and maintenance for three water treatment plants in a way that enabled local actors to learn and assume management responsibilities in the long-term.
Tetra Tech develops context-appropriate designs that meet international standards, incorporate locally available materials, match local labor capabilities, and require minimal operations and maintenance. Our ability to capture local, social, environmental, and economic factors in our designs ensures they are robust and can be implemented in each circumstance.
Tetra Tech’s designs meet a mixture of U.S. and international codes as well as local government and donor agency standards. We apply lessons learned from planning activities and previous experience to develop designs that are optimized for project’s objectives and end user needs.
Infrastructure development affects populations and minorities disparately. Tetra Tech takes social and gender dynamics into account to anticipate the effects of infrastructure on vulnerable populations and appropriately incorporate the needs of entire communities for use of infrastructure.
On the USAID Secondary Education Expansion for Development Project, we created a prototype design that can be manipulated for each site location depending on resources, climate, and seismic activity.
Tetra Tech provides construction monitoring and oversight services with a focus on training and capacity building to maximize investment and improve local contractor capabilities. We specialize in upholding quality control and quality assurance measures and focus on identifying reasonable solutions to issues that develop throughout the construction phase.
We provide detailed oversight of the construction phase, which is critical for maintaining compliance with U.S. and international codes and standards and maintaining adherence to drawings and specifications. We also train local construction contractors and build their capacity to ensure quality assurance and quality control and promote project sustainability after construction is complete.
On the USAID Engineering Services and Construction Oversight 2 Project, we are overseeing more than 300 construction sites simultaneously to maintain quality and consistency across the USAID Ethiopia infrastructure portfolio.
We assist clients with identifying and managing their environmental and social impacts and risks throughout the project life cycle. Our environmental specialists, social scientists, and engineers work as a fully integrated team to advance projects by avoiding or minimizing potential consequences of proposed infrastructure projects on communities and the natural environment.
At every stage of the project, we engage with local governments, regulators, and community stakeholders to help our clients not only obtain required regulatory consent but gain essential community buy-in needed for long-term sustainability.
On a Wastewater Recycling Project in Mongolia, we conducted an environmental and social impact assessment to help the MCC determine the feasibility of using recycled wastewater for cooling water in combined heat and power plants to conserve groundwater.
Tetra Tech supports involuntary resettlement activities that result from infrastructure improvement projects. In accordance with International Finance Corporation Performance Standards and World Bank Guidelines, our resettlement specialists are dedicated to reducing displacement through alternative routing, when possible. When displacement cannot be avoided, we work to minimize adverse social and economic impacts and improve or restore the livelihoods and standards of living of displaced persons.
To support the MCC Electricity Transmission Project in Nepal, we prepared a feasibility study and resettlement policy framework to mitigate community disruptions associated with power line extensions.
Tetra Tech provides program management for complex infrastructure design and construction projects to help our clients meet schedule and quality objectives. We monitor costs incurred against budget and work to avoid contractor claims by applying innovative solutions to challenges encountered during design and the construction phase. Using advanced technologies, we provide our clients with access up to date metrics on all aspects of their projects progress in real time.