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This session will highlight key strategies for evaluating, constructing, and preserving an agency’s pavement assets. Maintenance workers, supervisors, directors, engineers, and elected officials will benefit from a common sense approach to understanding the “fatal 4 of pavements.” This session will give attendees the tools needed to write effective contractor project bids. Supervisors will gain helpful tips in overseeing pavement preservation projects while maintenance staff will learn about various resources to better perform their job.
Read MorePotholes aggravate drivers, interfere with traffic flow, damage vehicles, cause collisions, and are a hazard to cyclists and pedestrians. They generate more complaints than other roadway problems and get a lot of media attention. Repairing potholes is a major activity for local, state and federal lands road maintenance crews throughout the year but primarily during the winter and early spring due to the prevalence of freeze-thaw cycles. Though materials, methods, and machinery for pothole repairs has not changed much in the last 20 years, there is a growing need for better training of the road crews, supervisors, and managers in understanding the causes of pothole formation, the proper repair type and techniques, and the identification of other pavement distresses that will eventually become potholes. More importantly, understanding how to prevent potholes by proper selection and application of various surface treatments, correction of underlying deficiencies and improving roadside drainage is vital to extending the service life of aging and obsolete roadways. This presentation outlines asphalt pavement construction, explains pothole formation, describes other pavement distresses that are precursors to potholes, compares the typical pothole repair materials and methods, examines pavement preservation methods, and explains ways to establish a proactive, systematic reporting and tracking of pothole complaints and repairs. The information to be presented is based on the upcoming APWA Pothole Prevention and Patching Practices Guidebook developed by the speakers.
Read MoreA finance department is primarily composed of budget and accounting areas, with other functions such as investments, debt issuance, rate and fee setting, revenue, billing, and purchasing. Most finance directors come from an accounting background, especially for smaller to mid-sized organizations. Their training is not in quantifying risk, and in-fact they are not rewarded for taking risks. However, the principles of life cycle asset management is to manage an asset at its lowest life cycle cost while still meeting a target service level. This directly ties into managing cashflow (current revenues used to pay for operations and maintenance) which in term impacts various financial metrics such as operating cash on hand and the debt coverage ratio. Separate, but connected is the capital plan which can be a combination of both debt and an allocation of reserves. The justification of funding asset management practices involves benchmarking costs and demonstrating how and when assets deteriorate that the maintenance costs increase, the repair costs increase, and if the right investment intervention is not made, the asset could fail prematurely and catastrophically costing a great deal more. This session walks through the various financial/asset management concepts to convince finance to support asset management and condition assessment activities.
Read MoreWe live in The Instant Information Age. Thanks to social media, customers receive the news they want without having to ask for it. Utilities must meet these rising expectations, especially during emergencies. The presentation shows attendees how to successfully communicate with the press, the public, and elected officials. Say the words “social media” and you get a variety of reactions, especially from water professionals. Some will speak of the medium’s value in allowing utilities to push out important, positive news about their work directly to their customers. Others will lament about the power and attention social media gives to a disproportionate number of their customers who always seem to be angry at the utility, either because of an issue with their account or because they’ve been told by WATER KILLS! posts that their drinking water is unsafe. As many of us know from our personal use of social media, both of these points-of-view are correct, and nothing confirms each side’s opinion more than to watch social media react when a crisis occurs. When an emergency hits, social media works as both hero and villain. This presentation shows water professionals how to make it more of a hero by demonstrating how utilities have far more to gain by taking part in social media than they may believe. It also shows how proper planning, as if social media communications were another operation within the utility, puts utilities in a position to succeed. The presentation shows how to create a successful crisis communications plan, based on tried-and-true methods and messages, that covers ALL significant water and wastewater emergencies. It shows how to use mass media, social media, the experiences of your employees, and yes, comments from your customers, to create a successful response throughout an entire crisis, whether it involves the failure of a major main or pump station or the impacts of a significant weather event.
Read MoreThe pending retirement wave, increased automation, resource availability, and more demanding, envi-ronmentally-focused stakeholders are all changing the way utilities operate and sustain their businesses. In Florida, Orange County Utilities (OCU) faced these concerns head on by creating an employee devel-opment program called Skilled Workforce Achievement Program (SWAP). It promotes a skilled, engaged, and motivated-to-learn workforce, built on a comprehensive Learning Management System (LMS). SWAP defines and documents how employees can acquire technical and leadership skills relevant to duties of established positions and advance throughout the utility with those acquired skills. To best track, train, and report the elements of SWAP, the need for a comprehensive employee learning man-agement system was identified. An LMS would make visible and easily accessible to all employees the necessary courses and credentials identified in the learning paths. Before SWAP and the introduction of the LMS, the upkeep of training, certification achievement, and license renewal all took place in disparate formats. Throughout OCU’s 900 employee organization, SWAP’s momentum developed, eventually providing the impetus for unified coding, categorization, and tracking throughout the entire system. What took once took place on spreadsheets and databases, papers and memory, now is accounted for and available within the LMS in the clearly outlined learning paths. Each learning path from entry-level trainees up to advanced positions reflects distinct types of knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to fulfill OCU’s mission and divisional goals. The courses, licenses, and practices needed at each level throughout an employee’s career are tracked in the LMS, which is now the primary system that is used for tracking and managing OCU’s learning and training. The end result is an opportunity for willing and talented employees to lead OCU to success through meaningful career development.
Read MoreSmall towns and rural communities may produce less waste but that does not mean less work. Fewer staff, resources and vendor options create unique obstacles for smaller town solid waste…
Read MoreThere are numerous ways to receive a weather forecast in today’s world of social media and expanding technology. Which way is most preferred? An old-school written article or a jazzy video? Are more messages in a variety of platforms better or more confusing for the end user? What piece of a weather forecast is most important to snow and ice decision makers in order to know when to call out crews, which chemicals should be used, and how to overall prepare for the upcoming storm event. The understanding of inconsistent messaging channels is key to proper communication and decision making. What does this communication look like in the future? This Dare to Ask session will engage the audience by asking the questions above. A live polling quiz at the beginning can uncover preferences and help drive discussion to help better understand the best platform, message and delivery for communicating weather data and forecasts. Is there a special recipe to follow that makes all management levels happy?
Read MoreWinter maintenance Technology and programs have been constantly evolving throughout the years. From a time when operations were very reactive to today’s operations which are far more proactive. In this session, we will look at how operations, programs and technologies have changed throughout the years. With over 70 years combined experience in winter operations are presenters will share their insights and experiences on how these programs and technologies have evolved and how they had benefited their agencies and the industry. They will also share how they were involved in many of the innovations and programs that are being used today. They will discuss successes and failures and the challenges of implementing new programs and technologies in their agencies.
Read MoreAs increasing research is done into emerging trends and citizen’s expectations for our cities, one item is becoming clear: trees are a valuable part of a community and the urban forest is expected to be preserved and replanted for future generations. However, building a policy or an ordinance to achieve this can quickly turn into a daunting task. Beginning in 2010, the Springfield, Missouri, Urban Forestry Department focused on establishing a simple, effective way to rebuild its urban forest using three core strategies: tree preservation during construction; tree planting to mitigate losses; and building the NeighborWoods program, encouraging citizen participation. These strategies have placed Springfield’s urban forest, and their community, in a strong position that is getting better every day.
Read MoreWhether you're not sure what the words Asset Management (AM) mean or you're part of an organization that is a decade or more into applied practices, this session will broaden your team's ability to assess where your agency is at and where you might like to take the next bite toward more cost effective customer service delivery. This session will provide an overview of a rapid assessment tool adopted by the State of Michigan. This spreadsheet tool is adapted from the AM expertise of public works professionals with the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia (IPWEA) who have been providing technical manuals, guidance, templates, and education in the AM space for the past two decades. IPWEA developed a self-assessment tool widely used in public works – both internally and in communications with peers. Mr. Pratt is an APWA Jennings Randolph scholar who traveled to Australia and New Zealand to learn the insights that will be provided. He has been engaged with Michigan's efforts to formalize a statewide AM framework including training and education. The bulk of the presentation will be an interactive exercise to simulate an agency brownbag-type session to dive into the rating questions used for self assessment. Example outputs will be shared. Introductory discussion will expose attendees to broader organizational roles beyond data management/collection and prioritization. After initially expanding attendee understanding of this longer-range vision of AM used by thousands of international public works agencies, the focus of this session will be the simplicity of creating short term goals based on current organizational capabilities. This initial discussion will include summarizing the reasons these areas of assessment were developed by IPWEA and how those have been adapted for North America, first by the Canadian Public Works Association (CPWA).
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