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The Emergency Management Technical Committee has tackled the subject of dam safety for 2022. The committee has identified public safety risks associated with low head dams as worthy of further…
Calibration is an important tool for winter maintenance best practices. Evaluating different materials, solids, or liquids for calibration is a standard for testing or running a pilot program. Properly calibrated…
Building a truck can be a complicated process. Specifying the “right” truck can require hundreds of decisions and choices that can potentially impact each other. This session is designed to…
Communities big and small, rural and urban, are exploring smart city applications. Technology can offer wonderful benefits—making communities safer, easier to navigate, more efficient, and more engaged—but only when implemented…
Julia started her motivational speaking career with a TEDx talk and she is now a sought-after speaker for corporations, universities, and conferences. Previous speaking engagements include AIG, BCBSNC, SAE International,…
Have you ever experienced purchasing less than superior salt for your salt barns? Salt containing debris, contaminates or other trace aggregates can damage equipment. Were you aware of the damage this can cause to your manufacturing and application systems? The City of Dublin would like to share a lesson learned and a tool that has saved our salt brine manufacturing and application systems!
This session introduces public works and state DOT employees to an educational opportunity that values their on-the-job training and awards college credits for much of it. College credit towards an associate degree in this online program is awarded for working knowledge such as for CDL, FEMA training and traffic control. Students receive management skills they need to be promoted, as well as general education required for the degree. The program develops fundamental leadership skills and teaches participants how to build and maintain a productive team.
Using liquids in your winter maintenance operations has several benefits. Agencies have found that their total use of materials, particularly salt, has been significantly reduced. In addition, using liquids provides significant cost savings, and experience has shown that use of liquids provides better safety and improved levels of service than more traditional approaches. The speaker will examine the new ways in which liquids are being used in winter operations today. These methods include blending liquids, where small amounts of enhancing liquids are added to a base salt brine. The speaker will also discuss the use of liquid only routes, where agencies have had great success using liquids not only before the storm but also all through the storm. Finally, the speaker will discuss how liquids can be used with solids to handle difficult accumulations of snow and ice.
Columbus Department of Public Utilities (DPU) implemented the business case evaluation (BCE) process and avoided over $70 million in costs after seven years. The added social and environmental value of conducting BCE’s brings the cost avoidance to $100 million, and service levels, safety, and risk exposure improved. The BCE process received international recognition from the Water Services Association of Australia. It was featured in a McGraw-Hill Report, “Water Infrastructure Asset Management: Adopting Best Practices to Enable Better Investments.” A case study, which will show how BCEs are conducted and the savings that can be realized, includes examples of monetizing social and environmental factors that have no market-driven value. At PWX21, agencies discussed the difficulties of monetizing these factors. Implementation lessons will be shared, including establishing BCE policy and avoiding common implementation problems.
To provide accessibility under ADA guidelines, state and local government agencies are required to perform self-evaluations of their existing facilities relative to the accessibility requirements of the ADA. The public entities are then required to develop a transition plan to address any deficiencies. With 5,000 lane miles over 500 square miles in the City of Phoenix, developing a city-wide ADA Transition Plan is a significant undertaking requiring several months and millions of dollars. To understand the amount of effort needed to create a comprehensive ADA Transition Plan, the City performed a pilot project. The Title II compliant project included data collection using a vehicle-mounted, ground-based light detection and ranging (LiDAR) instrument; extraction of data into a usable geographic information system (GIS) database; and compliance analysis to identify areas for improvement. Additionally, the study defined potential options to perform ADA self-evaluation and develop a comprehensive ADA Transition Plan for the entire city.