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The City of London uses social media to share information about winter maintenance service levels, per-snow fall, while snowing and post snowfall. Twitter, facebook, selfie videos and a webpage will help residents understand your winter maintenance plan and what to expect. Leverage local media – invite them to your works yard for Q & A and show off equipment while explaining what to expect. Snow Removal Updates on Twitter alone resulted in 275,084 impressions. Corporate Communications has reported a noticeable improvement in tone and complimentary visitor replies / comments on winter maintenance-related content
Read MoreTransportation is one of the industries hardest hit by the COVID-19 crisis. Yet, as an essential business, transportation asset management has continued evolving during the pandemic in innovative ways. The speaker will explore how public works agencies can seize opportunities to improve emergency management, workforce agility, strategic planning, and maintenance operations in the pandemic’s aftermath.
Read MoreWhen the COVID-19 outbreak nearly shut down the American workforce in March 2020, businesses, institutions, and classrooms closed immediately. California’s typically jammed Bay Area freeways and city streets were so peaceful that chirping bird could be heard in lieu of car horns. Never had residents imagined, let alone witnessed, completely empty Bay Area freeways at rush hour. Everything routine and familiar stopped. One sector, however, had no choice but to continue: essential public infrastructure and maintenance. Infrastructure improvements rely on momentum and maintenance relies on schedule, with both now challenged from staffing to safety, public works directors were forced to pivot their workforce, and quickly. All city services became even more critical with everyone sheltering in place. The COVID-19 pandemic was a once-in-a-career challenge that taught even the most seasoned leaders new rules for success. Hear from public works directors from neighboring California cities, and the San Mateo County Public Works Director, who lead their departments through the battle that was the first few months of the 2020 pandemic. What did they discover about remote working? How did they adapt their processes? What safety protocols had to be implemented? How did they manage staff who couldn’t work remotely? How did they select what and who was essential? How did the re-introduce staff to the office? Most importantly, though we might not see another extraordinary global event like this for another 100 years, what did these public works career professionals learn about their staff and themselves when they faced the Public Works Pandemic Pivot of 2020.
Read MoreThe Howard County, MD Compost Facility is a premier example of how municipalities can provide cost-effective composting of food waste, yard trim, and manure. This case study illustrates available composting technology and key facility design considerations for a successful project. The project economics show how waste diversion offsets the capital and operational costs, making the business case for waste diversion and organics management.
Read MoreHPW’s Emergency Management Program is built on the Emergency Management cycle: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. During responses, HPW provides life safety, incident stability, and property protection operational and tactical support to the Houston Fire Department (HFD), Houston Police Department (HPD), Mayor’s Office of Special Events (MOSE), Health Department, Department of Neighborhoods, Solid Waste, and other various city, county, state, and federal agencies. The “other first responder” community is also maintained by relationships. It takes time to develop and commitment to maintain these relationships. To establish trust within the first responder community, we must actively reach out to our partners in emergency management. HPW will demonstrate their response capabilities including heavy and specialized equipment (along w/video clips), traffic control devices, and response trained personnel; and discuss the importance and benefits of identifying, coordinating, training, and exercising with key response stakeholders. Currently, HPW hired a full-time HPW-Emergency Management Coordinator. Currently, HPW is in the process of issuing a UAS (unmanned aerial system) contract which includes emergency response support services. This UAS contract will allow insight into hard to reach areas that could be flooded and enhance information and safety without putting boots on the ground. In last few years, HPW has supported and responded to natural disasters including tropical cyclones and floods; planned special events like the World Series, Houston Marathon, Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, VIP and Presidential visits; and supported other life safety and incident stability operations during structural fires and technical rescues. HPW will demonstrate how and why Public Works Departments are the Other First Responder.
Read MoreCOVID-19 has impacted our entire country and the world. Many businesses, organizations, and governmental agencies have shifted to working in a virtual environment or have been required to shut down to minimize the spread. However, public works operations have continued to provide their essential functions to maintain our infrastructure, whether streets, storm water maintenance, water utilities, sewer operations, traffic control devices, or maintaining government buildings, including those used by the public. This session discusses the various strategies (PPE, use of technology, minimizing contact) to ensure employee’s safety adopted by public works agencies throughout the country to respond to the pandemic. Presenters will also discuss some positive benefits this situation has created such as expedited technology usage in public works that has allowed more efficiency and impact to services provided. Pandemics and natural disasters, like hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, or earthquakes, demonstrate that public works professionals are first responders and are vital to our society. These dedicated employees have had to adjust and update how they do work, what resources they use, and how they communicate in a short period of time. Public works staff have kept working in operations while managing COVID-19 concerns and risks, which has allowed our supplies, emergency response, and commerce to keep flowing. They have also permitted residents and businesses to have clean water and disposal of liquid and solid waste, safe streets to drive on, and facilities to use. They have accepted new responsibilities and are able to adapt quickly. Public works has again shown as always, to be first to respond and last to leave. This COVID-19 crisis shows just how public works have adapted and provided necessary support to keep infrastructure functioning for citizens, users, and business in this most challenging time. Based on article published in APWA Reporter.
Read MoreAt the conclusion of this session, participants will be better able to create fleet management RFPs that will adequately assess potential fleet management partners as good fits–not just now, but for the long haul, including the top 5 capabilities participants should make sure to ask for in a fleet management platform in 2021. Participants will also learn to evaluate fleet solutions across departments–such as waste management, seasonal maintenance, and streets–so that a new partner can be selected that addresses the whole municipality’s needs vs. siloed solutions or a patchwork of platforms. Finally, participants will discover how to analyze the contract(s) of their current fleet management vendor(s), so that a transition can be made as cost-effectively and painlessly as possible
Read MoreBroomfield, Colorado, has an extensive snow and ice control program, covering more than 260 centerline miles. Public works partnered with an internal group, the Innovation Ecosystem (IE), to improve their snow and ice management program. The IE Innovators and Change Makers are specially trained in the practice of Lean Process and Change Management. A cross-divisional team of snowfighters was selected. Fighting snow was viewed by staff as a Streets Division operation, even though several operators from Utilities and Parks Divisions were needed. Representation from each division was critical for inclusion of all challenges and perspectives. The operators selected were not supervisors in the snow program to limit the filtering of communication between the drivers and the leaders of the project. Next, the team learned about each other and managing change. They were introduced to concepts such as constructive dissonance and creative abrasion. These concepts, combined with a greater understanding of their fellow operators, allowed them to clearly identify the challenges they had been experiencing. The team developed solutions to implement before the next snow season began. New snowshift schedules to provide desired certainty and reliability to the snowfighters and division managers, formalized training schedules shared with all drivers, and formalized and expanded communication paths were identified. Since implementing the changes, the morale of the snow fighting team has increased. The operators feel less fatigue throughout the season. Fleet Services has seen a reduction in repairs as a result of the training. The increased communication has allowed other improvements to occur based on driver discussions and feedback. The ecosystem of innovation allowed staff to collaborate and implement changes to the snow and ice program that improve the experience for the snowfighters and the community. The entire process took less than six months with available resources.
Read MoreThere are 240,000 water main breaks that occur across the country every year that leak 2.1 trillion gallons, costing billions of dollars in lost water. Today, most water distribution pipelines are old, buried, hidden from view, and not monitored at all. This leads to a lack of visibility along the miles of pipe that limits our ability to find leaks, prevent water loss, and understand the true operational nature of our systems. New sensor and software technologies can give utility operators continuous visibility for automation and fast operational response resulting in reduced water loss, fewer main breaks, regulatory compliance, and optimized asset health. Many utilities, however, do not have the financial, technical, or analytical resources needed to successfully deploy these remote monitoring assets. Discover how municipal water utilities are now leveraging new business models to gain access to the technologies, data, and practical insights without having to allocate capital budget, configure IT assets, or hire staff for monitoring and analytics.
Read MoreMany local governments are facing significant challenges due to a changing climate, including more frequent and longer lasting wildfires, drought, flooding, extreme heat and storms, as well as sea level…
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