Grab a beverage at the Happy Hour Jam cash bar in the hallway and then join your colleagues for an insightful exchange of ideas! 

Hosted by APWA's Fleet Management Committee 

The Internet of Things (IoT) is changing everything, including how public fleet operations manage and maintain vehicles and equipment. Connected vehicles must communicate with each other and the environment around them, supplying drivers with directional and safety information, including weather and road condition information. What does this mean for your fleet operations? What technologies do your managers and technicians need to know about to manage today's fleet and the fleets of the near- and long-range future? Join us and share your current experiences and your plans for the future.

• Identify the various connected vehicle technologies.
• Share your experiences with managing and maintaining your agency's connected vehicles and equipment.
• Exchange ideas about what the future holds and what fleet managers can do now to be ready!

Despite the diverse fields within public works, the common goal is to improve lives through infrastructure. Together, professionals from many fields leverage their expertise to design, build, maintain, and coordinate services and structures that lead to quality of life. Yet, what are you doing as an organization to ensure your workforce is fully engaged, and fully realizing the extent of its impact? Coconino County, Arizona, will share its story of moving towards an engaged and accountable workforce that surpasses its task of building infrastructure, to realizing its importance to the community. They’ll discuss the steps taken to develop a vision for a vibrant, transformative workplace where learning is valued, leadership realized at all levels, and the team feels like family. Their strategic planning steps are used as an engagement tool that addresses a culture of learning, succession planning, and the importance of aligning operational priorities with growing a healthy, thriving workplace culture.

• Utilize strategic planning as an employee engagement tool.
• Plan for dramatic changes in the workforce through succession planning strategies rooted in leveraging formal and information opportunities for learning and training.
• Align and pursue operational priorities in-tandem with organizational development priorities to foster a robust, healthy organizational culture.

The Carr Fire was a large wildfire that burned in the Shasta Trinity Counties in California from July 23, 2018 to August 30, 2018. In the City of Redding, eight lives were lost, over 300 homes were destroyed and 38,000 people were evacuated. During the fire, the City of Redding, California, Public Works Department/Water Utility worked tirelessly to keep the water system operational and pressurized to deliver the water necessary for life safety and fire suppression. Through power outages and a 30 percent increase in peak daily demand, the water system never failed. Water operators from the City of Redding even extinguished a structure fire at an evacuated neighboring water treatment plant, saving the treatment building. Come hear their story about their response and recovery efforts.

• Prepare for a natural disaster such as a large wildfire in your community.
• Identify deficiencies in your Emergency Response Plan that could impede your actions and ability to respond to the emergency.
• Recognize the various types of emergencies and create contingency plans to allow you to perform your daily responsibilities.

Maintenance and Operations are the cornerstones of keeping transportation systems safe and efficient. As technologies are introduced on a near-daily basis, it’s vital that public works departments discuss the benefits and concerns of “the new.” This discussion will answer the following questions: What are the impacts of current and future technologies on roadway maintenance and operations? How will automated and connected vehicles change how we operate and maintain the system? What won’t change?  For example, AVs will still operate on pavement. Road maintenance will be essential for a long, long time. How can we use new technologies to improve maintenance and operations activities, and how might these technologies provide better situational awareness? Do the basics of maintenance and operations still matter?  (Spoiler Alert: Yes—a lot!) Find out more by attending this important discussion on the future of roadway maintenance and operations.

• Identify the impact of new technologies such as automated vehicles/connected vehicles on your maintenance and operations activities.
• Identify the impact of new technologies such as automated vehicles/connected vehicles on your maintenance and operations activities.
• Demonstrate the value of basic maintenance and operations now and in the future to ensure decision-makers continue to invest in maintaining the transportation system alongside investments in new technologies.

Grab a beverage at the Happy Hour Jam cash bar in the hallway and then join your colleagues for an insightful exchange of ideas! 

Mentoring can be a powerful professional development tool. A successful mentorship is a two-way experience. Attend this Happy Hour Jam discussion of the relationship responsibilities for both mentees and mentors.   This Jam session will be facilitated by Thom Singer, our PWX emcee. Thom is looking forward to leading this conversation about establishing the framework for a mentorship relationship.

• Identify the steps for finding a mentor and building a good relationship.
• Describe the responsibilities the mentee should take on as part of a successful mentorship relationship.
• List the benefits of becoming a mentor and think about the perspectives you could provide as a mentor.

Grab a beverage at the Happy Hour Jam cash bar in the hallway and then join your colleagues for an insightful exchange of ideas! 

Hosted by APWA's Solid Waste Management Committee 

Solid Waste Partnerships - Who do you partner with and how can you make those relationships more beneficial?  Grab a beverage and come have a lively conversation with the APWA Solid Waste Management Committee and your fellow professionals to gain insights and share best practices on teaming with consultants, contractors, disposal entities, processing facilities, equipment vendors, end markets and others.

• Exchange ideas with your colleagues about establishing effective solid waste partnerships.
• Identify challenges and solutions for working with consultants and contractors.
• Gain insight from other solid waste professionals about best practices for working with disposal and processing facilities, equipment vendors, and end markets.

1439: Public Works to the Rescue: Looking Beyond Structural Solutions for Effective MS4 Nutrient Control

Effectively reducing nutrient loads will require a full suite of structural and non-structural implementation strategies. The cost-effectiveness and co-benefits of a full range of management alternatives, from street sweeping to stream restoration to leaf litter collection, must be utilized to meet nutrient reduction targets. To encourage these approaches, regulatory program partners across the country should rely on expert research and implementation insights from within and outside their regions to avoid the misdirected funding and costly mistakes that have already been made elsewhere.

• Review the latest research on leaf litter collection and the benefits for stormwater-related nutrient control.
• Compare regional nutrient credit policies and discrepancies within the Northeast region.
• Examine cost implications of widespread decentralized, structural stormwater treatment for nutrient control.

Speaker: Zach Henderson, Technical Manager, Woodard & Curran

1543: Practical Stormwater Data Collection with Small Unmanned Aerial Systems

The availability of affordable small unmanned aerial systems - sUAS (also known as drones) with lightweight sensors and powerful photogrammetry software has made sUAS a useful and flexible tool for stormwater management data collection. sUAS data collection offers advantages over ground-based methods, including rapid topographic mapping, thermal and multispectral imagery for evaluation of vegetation and hydrology patterns, and increased worker safety. Commercially available sUAS flight planning and photogrammetry software allows for rapid preparation of topographic maps useful for evaluating stormwater drainage patterns. Specialized sensors allow for collection of multiple data types including mapping impervious ground, vegetative health and growth, stormwater discharge mixing zones, and the effects of discharge on receiving waters. This presentation will include an overview of various stormwater applications, sUAS regulations, training, sensor, and software selection, and the accuracy and limitations of sUAS data collection.

• Communicate within your organization regarding the feasibility of stormwater data collection using sUAS.
• Identify stormwater data collection tasks on your projects that can be streamlined or enhanced using sUAS.
• Select sUAS and sensors for specific stormwater-related data collection activities.

Speaker: Brendan Brown, P.W.S., Environmental Scientist, CDM Smith

Speaker: Howard Young, PG, Senior Geologist, CDM Smith

Preserving the knowledge of its workforce is an important task for every organization. Built usually at great organizational cost, knowledge is fragile and can be easily lost. While laws, guidelines, and procedures provide guidance, they rarely define every single step that people take in performing their daily work. Documenting these steps is where Artificial Intelligence (AI) can come into to play. Over the past several years, the City of Grandview, Missouri has used the power of neural networks to preserve organizational intelligence and develop it into a simple AI tool. This tool helps staff process service requests. Discover how AI is easily accessible and available for organizations of all sizes and how it can help cities improve responsiveness to citizens.

• Define Artificial Intelligence (AI) in simple terms.
• Discover how data files can be setup for study and analysis using AI.
• Explain the difference between Artificial Intelligence and Tabular Intelligence.

Examine how newer technologies are providing superior safety, performance, cost, and environmental benefits to winter road maintenance operations. Scientific research will be presented, as well as case studies from European countries with major snowfall, to demonstrate why and how these technologies are meeting increased demands for safer roads, lower environmental impact, and superior fleet management while solving problems resulting from current salt and labor shortages.

• Identify alternative technologies for optimizing salt performance and usage and evaluate the science behind the effectiveness of the 70:30 pre-wetting technology.
• Develop a plan for snow and ice removal by understanding new technologies that simplify driver operations, minimize training requirements, enhance road safety, and complete jobs quicker and more efficiently to minimize labor demands and overtime costs.
• Evaluate and optimize fleet performance understanding the value of advanced telematics to control and track salt usage, road conditions and driver routes, as well as record and optimize routes.

There are many resources available to develop staff and grow leaders, including books, classes, assessments, seminars, mentors, coaches, and much more. Most of the principles they teach are based on years of proven research and anecdotal evidence. Most of that research was conducted on and by people who don’t look like me. Sometimes the skills and leadership tactics that I have been taught work for me and sometimes they don’t. So, what should I do when they don’t? There is another level of situational awareness, trust building, relationship building, and team building required when leading as a black female that goes unacknowledged in the workplace—especially in traditional white male-dominated professions. Outcomes that are generally taken for granted among non-minority demographics are not a given for us. We must acknowledge this as our reality and learn to work within it while developing as leaders. A grave disservice is done assuming the results of applied leadership tactics are universal and independent of race, gender, and other cultural biases. Learn to trust your instincts, identify deflections, and navigate roadblocks in a world where "...one of these things is not like the others."

• Identify workplace biases that could be influencing training outcomes and leadership opportunities.
• Recognize where leadership training and coaching can fall short by not acknowledging differences as a factor in the outcomes of various workplace situations.
• Discover useful tips for how to work and remain effective as a leader within systems where "...one of these things is not like the others."