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On October 10, 2018, Bay County was struck by the third-most intense Atlantic hurricane to make landfall in the United States. It was the first Category 5 hurricane on record to impact the Florida Panhandle and produced the nation’s largest debris disaster. The storm was attributed to at least 74 deaths and caused an estimated $25.1 billion in damages. Bay County, Florida, received the eye of the storm and the Public Works Department learned many important lessons both pre- and post-storm. Some of the lessons discussed in this presentation include: pre disaster staging; post-disaster staging; communications; FEMA paperwork and FEMA consultants; Disaster Management Sites (DMS); feeding and lodging staff and their families; emergency contracts; post-disaster traffic flow; FLAWARN; post-storm equipment needs; long-term recovery. Two years after Hurricane Michael, Bay County is still recovering, but plans are being put in place to help.
To meet the demand for 5G telecommunications, companies will be erecting hundreds of thousands of small cell towers–often TWO towers per streetlight in most communities. Most public Works agencies will do nothing, others have learned how to make MILLIONS from the opportunity and transform their agencies using smart technologies. Now, post-COVID-19, teleworking and the demand for 5G/broadband is skyrocketing. Installing hundreds of new towers in each city will create both incredible opportunities and unprecedented problems for public works officials. Many agencies are adopting innovative strategies to not only manage this “tsunami”, but are even partnering with the telecommunications companies, municipalizing, and re-purposing their street lights and traffic signal systems and charging for each of the hundreds, or thousands, of new towers, creating millions in new sources of revenue. Other cities have been even more visionary. They are “flipping” their annual streetlight systems from “must pays” (liabilities) to “cash cows”, or revenue streams. This session addresses these competing priorities: accelerating 5G: post-pandemic; creating resilient, critical “intelligent infrastructure”; ensuring healthy RF radiation levels; generating millions in new revenue; installing/leasing excess city fiber optics for cash; leasing streetlights as transmitter sites; improving traffic signal coordination; setting aesthetic standards; and futureproofing and Smart City strategic planning
This session details the experience of a large, full-service municipal public works department, the City of Olathe, Kansas, going through the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (DHS CISA) Protective Services and Cybersecurity Assessment processes. It features a roundtable including both public works and emergency management professionals as well as members of DHS CISA Protective Services and Cybersecurity groups. The discussion will have two areas of focus. First, participants will discuss specific critical areas of risk assessment, cyber security, employee safety, and continuity of operations. Specific attention will be paid to basic risk assessment principles, SCADA vulnerabilities, physical security and active shooter training, and second and third order threats to service delivery. Second, participants will have an open discussion on the DHS CISA assessment process as it pertains to the unique needs of public works, both areas of strength and opportunities for improvement. Finally, the presentation will provide attendees the opportunity to hear from all three stakeholder groups involved in this process and gain an awareness of how this free program may be of benefit to their agency.
Rapid digital adoption driven by the pandemic has altered the traditional methods for engaging landowners and completing projects. This presentation addresses the challenges and benefits affecting real estate and land departments that formerly relied on in-person transactions. It includes suggestions for working with virtual open houses, electronic notary, online title work and virtual negotiation.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are manmade chemicals that includes PFOA, PFOS, and others; manufactured and used around the United States since the ‘40s. PFAS are found in water-repellent, wrinkle-free,…
The City of Waconia is an expanding west metro community within the seven county region of Minneapolis and Saint Paul in Minnesota. The City while partnering with the Minnesota Department of Transportation on a corridor expansion and frontage road improvement project were challenged with meeting storm water volume and water quality rules imposed by the watershed. The City chose storm water reuse as a management strategy to meet the requirements. Storm water irrigation isn’t a new science, golf courses have utilized this practice for years. What makes this interesting is the City is selling storm water to businesses and irrigating City parcels within the watershed in effort to meet their volume and water quality requirements. Knowledge of chloride impacts to receiving waters including storm water ponds were of concern, however the City has been vigilant in reducing winter chemical applications. Research after the fact through testing, we have found the challenge in excess of previous sampling efforts in other watersheds in the community. A second challenge is the multiple agencies providing winter services to impervious surfaces outside of the City operational control. As a result the City is taking the higher than desired chloride testing results to the next level through efforts of public and staff education, watershed winter chemical application tracking and route optimization through its AVL system. A new State of Minnesota Chloride Management Plan will require and enhance the City efforts to reduce the found chloride levels in the storm water, and assist the city in education efforts to reduce chloride impacts from an outside perspective. This presentation is tied to a Reporter Article being published in October of 2020
Carson City’s Pavement Management Plan for Fiscal Year 2019-2023 was approved by the Regional Transportation Commission in April 2018. The Plan formalized and established an efficient and effective strategy for preserving and maintaining the City’s 676 lane-miles of roadway and established five performance districts within the City with a five-year rotating work schedule. The Plan was designed to provide a predictable use of roadway funding while maintaining flexibility for unplanned city projects and “match” for grant funding opportunities, as needed. Now in its third fiscal year of implementation, city staff has implemented lessons learned from implementation in the first two years and has transformed the transportation capital improvement program from one focused on pavement to one that evaluates each project for opportunities to coordinate with water, wastewater, and stormwater projects to reduce overall Public Works Department costs, streamline work efforts, and improve transparency of local decision-making regarding limited infrastructure dollars.
Benefit-cost analysis can be a powerful tool for informing infrastructure investment decisions. New York City’s Department of Transportation has been using this tool in the early stages of funding and design for select projects to identify alternatives that provide the greatest benefit to the public at the lowest cost. This talk demonstrates how the agency applied benefit-cost analysis on a major street redesign and on several bridge rehabilitation projects to save tens of millions of dollars while maximizing safety, mobility, and infrastructural benefits for the public. It also includes a discussion on how this benefit-cost analysis helped city government leadership select and fund the alternative that best advanced the city’s strategic objectives. The presenters will include senior executive management and the department’s policy office.
People love clarity. If you confuse, you lose. It’s all about surviving and thriving… and conserving calories. If you’re like most agencies and firms, you’re fed up with spending time and money on communications that don’t work. If you knew what to do differently, you would—but you don’t, and so you feel stuck. Meanwhile, your sales are lagging. Colleagues are confused. Your bottom line isn’t budging. And worst of all, you feel discouraged. Here’s the good news: It doesn’t have to be that way. In this talk, Everest Marketing Services President, Barbara Shuck—a StoryBrand Certified Guide—will share seven simple marketing principles proven to engage clients and prospects. Participants will walk away knowing how to capture their audience’s attention and compel them to respond. The presenter has spent her career developing communications that help clients stand out. Imagine submitting a proposal with a clear client-focused story about how your firm is the right fit for a project. Imagine a conversation where the other person leans into what you’re saying. Imagine a presentation that reflects your professionalism and expertise, where the audience or decision-makers are intrigued by your story… and your evaluation score reflects their interest! Imagine having something clever to say when someone asks you about your agency or business. With 25+ years working for design and construction firms, the presenter understands the frustration of not clearly communicating your differentiators and creating “why us” and “why not them” themes from the consultant’s side of the table. She regularly speaks with clients and understands how they, too, struggle with memos and meetings. And, because of almost four decades of experience in business, you can count on her to help you communicate clearly, both in writing and verbally. Attend this must-see session so you can learn 7 Steps to Communicate Clearly. Stop worrying about your communications, and get back to winning when you communicate.
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck the nation, leading to understandable confusion and concern, the public immediately began hoarding bottled water as a panicked, knee-jerk reaction. It was understandable to a degree, the actions being recommended to reduce the impact of the virus were the first of their kind. Being told you shouldn't leave the house and that you should minimize trips for basic necessities will lead you to stuff your cart with everything you can find. Of course, what we discovered very early on was that COVID-19 did not impact the quality of our drinking water. In fact, the worst potential impacts from the virus on our water and wastewater services were not its threats to public health, they were the threats to staffing levels at our plants. Dozens of utilities sheltered their staffs at their plants, rotating them out after days at a time, to make sure the water and wastewater systems kept running. During the earliest days of the crisis, the press and the public were looking for any good news to reassure themselves that life would be turned upside down just a little less. And that's where proactive communications about public water's response to COVID-19 perfectly fit the bill. Here was a positive story, no impact on drinking water, that attached to EVERY viewer or reader of a news outlet covering their service area. If customers questioned or didn't think about the value of their water before COVID-19, there was a new opportunity to drive home that point during the pandemic response. After all, imagine if COVID infected our drinking water? Our lives would have been very different. Hundreds of positive stories ran across the nation by public water's higher value. References to our water's value during COVID-19 don't have to stop once we get a vaccine; we should mention it at every turn for years to come. The staffing response during COVID-19 also served as a tremendously positive story from several utilities.