New City Center Drainage Design Help

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jblack36

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This will be long so bare with me.  For a quick background on the situation,  I am an EIT at a small civil engineering firm.  We focus on land development projects: residential subdivisions and commercial site plans.  As the only EIT under the only PE in the office, I've done most of the storm drain design and reports for these small projects.  However, we just picked up a huge project (way out of  our scale of work imo) to do the utility master plan design for a new city center.  I'm talking 5,000 residential units, 1,500,000 sq ft of office space, and 500,000 sq ft of retail space over 300 acres of undeveloped land.  Basically a new "downtown city" from scratch with buildings ranging from 3-12 stories, a new train station, etc.  

Master planning the culinary water system wasn't bad as the city has their own model that they will run our design with and provide feedback.  The sanitary sewer system was very intensive but now complete and I feel great about it.  However, we are just moving on to the Stormwater Drainage system and I feel lost.  On our small projects we have always just used the Rational Method with conservative C values.  This was acceptable for small acreage projects.  However, with a project of this size and complexity, and for how impervious it is, I don't know where to begin.  

A few facts.  We have be green-lighted to freely discharge into the large, adjacent lake.  Therefore, no retention or detention storage is needed.  Which is nice.  We basically just have to capture and convey all runoff efficiently.  The city calls for conveyance systems to be designed for the 10-year storm event.  Rainfall intensities are to be obtained from the online NOAA Atlas 14 data.  My issue is designing a system of this scale with so many branches, trunk lines, varying times of concentration, etc.  I have little to no experience with methods and models other than the Rational Method.  I have been given clearance to research, download, and learn any new software or program to assist me.  Unless it is expensive and very time consuming (my boss is pretty tight).  But I am willing to spend the time to learn and understand whatever I need, even if it has to happen outside of work.  

Does anyone have any input for me.  I'm open to all opinions on methods, programs/software, strategies, anything really to make sure I can nail this.  i feel a lot of weight on my shoulders.  Thanks in advance.  

P.S. a question I can anticipate is about my PE.  He has been a PE for over 40 years and is very respected.  However, even he has admitted that a project of this scale and intensity is new to him. We are trying to tackle this together hence the green light to research and learn whatever I can.  

 
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