Public works is a primary emergency responder. When disasters and emergencies occur, public works maintenance operations personnel are among the first to respond.

Though the primary responsibility is clearing roadways so that other responders can access stricken areas, public works also provides traffic control, debris management and assists with rescue, evacuation, damage assessment, infrastructure repair, and restoration of certain services.

Public works is extensively involved in prevention, mitigation, response and, most importantly, recovery.

This presentation will examine what your agency should do to have the resources, training, policies, and procedures to be ready and responsive to all-hazards incidents.

In this session, you will hear about the snow and ice control operations of the City of Dubuque, Iowa.

It will cover activities related to storm preparation, anti-icing, deicing and removal operations. Additional focus will be on the equipment used to achieve the goals of the program efficiently. Come and see how your operation compares.

Case studies of best practices implemented by DOTs provide examples of practitioners proactively working to mitigate impacts of snow and ice control products.

Key areas providing the greatest benefit will be highlighted - including proper material storage, effective training of staff, calibration of equipment, and use of effective application strategies.

Focus will be on the potential impacts of abrasives, chlorides, acetates, formates, glycerols, glycols, and blended products including agricultural by-products to air quality, surface and ground water, roadside soils, flora and fauna.

The City of Fishers, Indiana Department of Public Works has developed an AVL (Automatic Vehicle Locating) system that utilizes the ESRI GIS platform. This cutting edge system allows the city to deploy its fleet based on live data which includes location, speed, history of routes driven and idle time. Using a combination of electronic and hydraulic sensors, the Fishers AVL system has proven to save thousands of dollars due to its ability to indicate to all drivers when a plow is raised and lowered and when salt spreaders are turned on and off. This data is displayed in each truck and a web based map that allows management to reallocate resources during a winter storm.

Our system is unique in that it is not an off the shelf software. We contracted with a software firm and had the system developed to suit the needs of our department. We have yet to find a vendor in the country who is providing the features we have in our system. Come see if your agency should pursue something similar.

Self-Assessment is an excellent way to examine and evaluate your agency's current management policies and procedures. In this session, you will gain an understanding of why self-assessment can improve effectiveness, promote staff and community pride, identify operation and management needs, promote teamwork and improve communication, to name a few reasons. Come listen, ask questions and talk to staff from accredited agencies to hear firsthand about their experience with Self-Assessment.

When budgets tighten and technology fails, how do you keep your agency moving forward? It might be time to look outside of conventional methods.

This session is a case study of some practical, yet not widely practiced, methods used in one city to advance technology to enhance and maintain equipment levels while preserving the budget. Come hear how a Fleet Manager and a Street Maintenance Superintendent have worked together to explore methods to stretch the budget while improving both operations and the diversity within the fleet. We will provide examples of steps taken while soliciting audience participation with both ideas and questions.

Following a challenging winter season in 2015-2106, the City of Omaha, Nebraska recognized the need to update its winter maintenance operations plan to be relevant in terms of actual operational strategies and current level of service expectations.

The City was faced with overcoming the obstacles of changing citizen and elected official expectations, workforce and leadership transitions, outdated documentation, poorly defined levels of service, an aging fleet, inexperienced drivers, and media pressures to optimize performance in winter maintenance operations.

Omaha's path to update the plan included engaging citizen input through surveys, hiring outside consultants for expertise and feedback, engaging the media, creative budgeting, and hard work to develop and implement a new winter maintenance operations plan for the 2016-2017 winter the entire process as well as an evaluation of lessons learned and performance measures for the 2016-2017 winter season.

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.