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As the complexity and diversity of fleet and winter maintenance equipment grows, the need for qualified fleet technicians does as well. Years ago, the APWA Kansas City Metro Chapter established a fleet technician competition to recognize their role in public works and winter maintenance operations. This competition helps foster excellence in job performance and provides an opportunity for the fleet technician competitors to network and share knowledge about methods they have not encountered before. Discover how your chapter or agency could set up a similar event.
The City of Dubuque, Iowa, incorporated new technology in their snow and ice control operations including the use of anti-icing, multi-edged plows, AVL, and a CNG-powered snow and ice control truck.
Hosted by APWA’s Fleet Services Committee
This session features Fleet professionals in open discussion about the current trends, challenges, and solutions in fleet management practices. Discover what resources are available to help you meet today’s challenges and share your expertise with your colleagues.
In citizen surveys among cities nationwide, similar to Bloomington in size and demographics, the City of Bloomington ranked #1 in 2012, #2 2013, and #1 in 2014 for resident satisfaction in snow and ice control.Bloomington is proud of the fast response and results that are the product of the team work and support of all public works employees.Learn about the best practices, materials, and technologies they use.
Learning Objectives:
– Increase your level of winter maintenance service.
– Analyze equipment and material usage for your winter maintenance program.
– Build an effective snow and ice program and get staff buy-in for the practices you use.
Throughout North America, agencies are under pressure to maintain or increase winter maintenance performance with reduced or stagnant funding. In the face of declining maintenance budgets, it's imperative to ensure that capital works projects created to preserve and modernize infrastructure are designed for the unique needs of winter maintenance professionals. Design requirements such as the Americans with Disabilities Act and initiatives such as Complete Streets and Green Infrastructure, have the potential to introduce features that can make winter maintenance efforts inefficient, but capital funding can also provide a tremendous opportunity to benefit winter maintenance activities in the long term.This presentation provides some tools for building trust and credibility with planners and engineers working on capital projects to increase the likelihood of positive impacts to snow and ice control.
Learning Objectives:
– Identify opportunities for capital projects to benefit winter maintenance activities.
– Recognize common elements of capital projects that can present challenges for snow and ice plans and possible ways to mitigate the impacts.
– Advocate for winter maintenance considerations on capital projects.
How do Public Works organizations in the southeast prepare for the worst when we are given the minimal amount of equipment and resources?Our locale puts us in an environment where we may battle snow, snow and ice, or just ice during the same event, which can have a detrimental effect on our economy and our infrastructure. Forecasting for the area is troublesome, a change in the temperature by 1 to 2 degrees can have you struggling to clear the streets (looking incapable), or left with crews looking at each other (inept). This session will showcase the challenges of fighting snow/ice in the southeastern regions of the US and discuss how we deal with the ongoing struggle to maintain a positive impression with the general public.
Learning Objectives:
– Examine how to make confident decisions when planning questionable weather events.
– Discuss how to develop training and scheduling procedures for short term events.
– Collect forecasts from several sources to make informed decisions.
The fleet industry has seen massive change over the last 10 years and continues to evolve. We are flooded with new technology, regulations, fuel types and sustainability efforts that have all become mainstream in repair shops. These changes, along with the retirement of baby boomers and an overall lack of new talent entering the hiring pool, are creating challenges when trying to staff a fleet department with technicians, supervisors and managers. This discussion offers strategies that are working for other agencies in attracting, compensating and retaining fleet technicians, supervisors and managers. Use this information to compare your team to other government agencies and the private sector.
Learning Objectives:
– Present strategies for development of fleet staff job descriptions that accurately represent current responsibilities in today’s job market.
– Attract and retain fleet staff.
– Communicate the value of professional fleet management in an organization and the need for ongoing training to remain competitive in today’s job market.
Asset management can mean different things to different people. A good formal asset management system should be one that is tailored to your organization. This session provides an overview of asset management conceptual elements, as well as some recommended foundational elements associated with an organization's formal asset management system. In addition, the APWA Asset Management Task Force developed resources to assist APWA members with the continued development and refinement of their asset management system. An overview of these resources are provided with a more detailed review of the drafted "Asset Management Road Map".
Learning Objectives:
Describe the elements of an effective asset management system.
Determine how to tailor an asset management system to the needs of your organization.
Discover the resources that APWA's Asset Management Task Force has developed to help you create and refine your asset management system.
This session will look at a two-way protected bike lane installed on a busy arterial street near the University of Minnesota. It will follow the project from feasibility and design, with community engagement, through construction by city forces, and into the first winter as maintenance crews work to provide high levels of service.
Abandoned utilities take up a great deal of the limited supply of the right-of-way. At a time when agencies are trying to fit more utilities in less space, can we afford to have that space used by unnecessary installations? Learn how other agencies are handling abandoned utilities and how they are keeping track of what’s hidden underfoot.