Hydropower Generation

With LaBella’s breadth of specialized engineering services, you can be sure of your project team before you’re sure of your scope.

Most hydropower facility owners and operators are faced with more regulatory requirements, and fewer qualified staff to initiate and manage the projects that will keep you in compliance.

In those cases, delivery of a set of technical drawings, no matter how good, is a long way from a turn key solution. If what you really need are experienced colleagues, armed with modernization and construction know-how, consider working with LaBella’s hydropower team.

Our technical solutions are enhanced by our long-standing owner extension of staff services. Which means we can develop, design, and manage your projects all the way through construction and commissioning. The result? Our team as your colleagues. Fewer consultants. Projects powered by partnership.

Talk to a LaBella Expert

Caroline Wheadon, PMP
Hydropower Discipline Leader
Rochester, NY - Headquarters

(585) 295-6699

Donald Lucas, PMP
Project Manager
Rochester, NY - Headquarters

(585) 771-6895

Patrick Waterman, PE
Director of Business Development
Southeast Region

(704) 941-2111

Our Full-Service Offerings

LaBella’s hydropower capabilities extend beyond the standard design support.

Design Services

With LaBella’s breadth of specialized engineering services, you can be sure of your design team before you’re sure of your scope.

  • Interconnection application
  • Automation support
  • Dam and spillway rehabilitation and upgrades
  • Intake and water conveyance structures
  • Hydraulics and hydrology
  • Gate design
  • Environmental monitoring and permitting
  • Electrical distribution, substations, and transmission
  • Facilities and buildings engineering
    • Civil and structural
    • Architectural
    • Power and lighting
    • Mechanical, HVAC, plumbing, and fire protection
  • Plant control, instrumentation, and monitoring
  • Fall protection and safety engineering

Owner Support Services

Good consultants see things from your side of the table and it’s a practice that LaBella has perfected. As technical project managers that can serve as Owner’s Representative and/or an extension of your staff, we will drive projects so you don’t have to. All you have to do is steer.

  • Project and program management
  • Scope and solution development
  • Procurement and bidding assistance
  • Scheduling and cost analysis
  • Facility operation and maintenance
  • Owner’s engineer
  • Regulatory compliance and permitting
  • Agency coordination (FERC, USACE, USFWS, NYSDEC, SHPO)
  • Dam surveillance and monitoring/dam safety program
  • Planning and public outreach
  • Emergency action plans
  • Licensing
  • Safety inspections, assessments, and improvements
  • Security assessments and improvements

Investigative Services

LaBella offers a variety of investigative services to discover and document the unknown. Our deliverables offer balanced assessments backed by our deep regulatory expertise.

  • Historical document review
  • Dam inspections
  • Condition assessments and inspections for water conveyance structures
  • Feasibility studies
  • Geotechnical investigations and studies
  • Materials testing
  • Environmental and regulated building materials (RBM) testing
  • Wetland Delineation
  • Endangered and threatened species studies, habitat assessments, and species surveys
  • Site, topographic, and property boundary surveys; GIS; and 3D surface modeling
  • Drone survey and visual inspection

Construction Support Services

  • Construction administration services
  • Construction engineering
    • Maintenance and traffic control design
    • Erosion and sediment control
    • Cofferdam design
    • Shoring design
  • Field construction management
  • Environmental testing and oversight
  • Commissioning and testing
  • Construction vibration, noise, and seismic monitoring
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