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What is a smart city? Explore how cities are using a multi-department strategy to use data to provide better city services and improve the day-to-day experience of residents. This session will feature the lessons learned during the installation of Kansas City’s smart city infrastructure and the strategies being deployed in other cities’ smart city initiatives.
This session features best practices for Winter Maintenance from around the world. Techniques and approaches to be disussed will aid in the planning for more effective and resilient infrastructure and public works services. Topics will include funding/budgeting, better asset management, improvig employee retention and reducing training and human resources costs.
The Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI) released the Envision rating system in 2012. It is a collection of best practices to help infrastructure professionals make better decisions during the lifecycle of all types of infrastructure. ISI considers resilience as a component of sustainability and defines resilience as the ability to successfully adapt to and/or recover readily from significant disruption. In the updated version of Envision, ISI has significantly expanded the Envision credits in terms of risk management, energy and emissions, climate change, durability and adaptability, recovery and synergies, and sustaining innovation. This presentation will introduce the new Envision v3 resilience credits and provide case study examples.
The City of West Des Moines has combined parks and public works operations to create a Public Services Department. This has caused them to look at the city’s snow operations as a whole. Some services have been contracted while others have been retained. They will share what they’ve learned and the impact on snow operations.
Warmer climate regions may have one or two small snow and ice events annually and then every few years, one snow event measuring 4 inches or more. But public works professionals in those areas still need to be prepared to provide safe roadways. The City of Greenville, South Carolina, combines some practical and some unorthodox approaches to achieve effective response to snow and ice events, including using their work management program. Check out their processes to see if some would work for your agency.
What is the future of winter maintenance? Driverless and sensor technologies are being tested and there are some who believe they will be deployed sooner rather than later. What is the research saying about how driverless technology will perform in snow and ice conditions? What should winter maintenance professionals be doing now to prepare? This session will also address new technologies in weather forecasting that are just around the corner and feature a point/counterpoint discussion between a road maintenance expert and a meteorologist.
Unexpected utility conflicts and associated damages consistently rank as a leading source of change orders and schedule delays on transportation projects. As the need for utilities to occupy highway right-of-way increases, the demand for innovation in contracting increases. The Kansas Department of Transportation (KDOT) recently completed $300 million design-build project using SUE as the primary utility coordination and relocation framework. The project included reconstruction of highways, major arterials, and interchanges over 2.5 years. Join in this discussion about lessons learned from all views including the property owner, design-builder, the utility owners and utility coordinators.
Even in the most well run organizations there seem to be certain employees that are allowed to perform at subpar levels. Why is that? They may have a supervisor that lacks the skills to take on the challenge of addressing performance issues. Most supervisors find they have to address this situation very few times in their career, sometimes years apart. Consequently, each time feels like a new journey into uncharted waters. Learn about a system that will help you efficiently address employee shortcomings, clearly communicate the improvements needed, and if necessary, build the paper trail that human resources requires for removal.
Since its first publication a decade ago, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)’s American Infrastructure Report Cards have shed an ignoble light on the state of infrastructure in many states. Attention has mostly been on transportation and water infrastructure without as much attention to aging facilities as much as parks, recreational fields, municipal office buildings, pumping stations, fleet operations, etc. This presentation will feature a case study from Southeastern Michigan about an infrastructure condition and prioritization technique.
Studies show that, on average, 80% of collection system issues reside in 20% of the entire system. This presentation will discuss refined technologies for breaking the collection system into smaller basins or micro-detection of issues to aid in locating surcharging, overflows, and infiltration and inflow. Micro-detection can be accomplished quickly and inexpensively with low-cost sensors, wireless connectivity, high-speed analytics, and sensor driven cameras. These tools form the backbone of an intelligent wastewater network.