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We 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 MoreThis tech box provides information on using blogs and storytelling to frame public projects.
Read MoreBen Nemtin is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of What Do You Want to Do Before You Die? and a star of MTV’s highest rated show ever on…
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).
Read MoreProviding tools and technology that empowers your workforce and enables them to get the job done but provide real time reporting and tracking for asset, maintenance management, and timekeeping is essential. One large county agency has done just that with deployment of tools to keep their maintenance workforce in the field using mobile devices that let them inspect, repair, and track work done on the county’s valuable assets and feed real data back to supervisory and management staff as well as time tracking and financial data. Tools also include mapping and GPS to update assets and maintenance records easily as well as provide important asset data in the hands of maintenance personnel.
Read MoreAs cities and communities work to recover from historic adversities, it is time to rethink how we live, work, and consume. Using technology to become more sustainable, fiscally responsible, and less wasteful is imperative going forward. Resilient cities will be those that efficiently and successfully implement technologies that help transition current practices to ones capable of a renewed or reimagined push towards resilience. Having worked with many cities across the country, presenters are acutely aware of the operational pain-points and cost challenges being faced. Solutions must be designed to address the specific challenges of municipal fleets and help them uncover taxpayer savings and more sustainable solutions. These solutions must deliver on the goals commonly outlined by city partners. They must be customizable and adaptable utilizing the latest technology like machine learning and artificial intelligence that generates insights and achieve improvements in key operational areas. If these technologies can be used to optimize the many vehicles delivering food, it can be used to optimize a fleet of vehicles on our city streets and gather valuable data in the process. A garbage truck can become a part of this larger technology and data-driven solution. The garbage truck effectively collects waste, but there are more than four million miles of roadways across the US and a number of problems exist. Issues like snow and ice, potholes, abandoned houses and storefronts, buildings covered in graffiti, and damaged street signs all create issues for our communities. Harnessing technology can proactively deal with these issues and create better, safer, and cleaner streets without adding more personnel to government budgets and more equipment to our already congested streets. By equipping existing government fleets with the right technology, it transforms a city service model from reactive to proactive, making our technology work harder and build city resiliency.
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