AMWA's 2013 Annual Meeting fast-forwarded to the future of utility leadership as more than 150 of the nation's top water utility executives and industry leaders gathered in St. Petersburg, Florida, October 27-30. High level discussion and intelligence sharing expanded management thinking and gave participants new ideas and approaches to the challenges facing today's water systems.
In his keynote address, Kalanithy Vairavamoorthy of the University of South Florida discussed "Innovation in Urban Water Infrastructure," noting the need for a paradigm shift away from 19th century principles, such as linear systems (use once and discharge) or using drinking water for all purposes. Integrated Urban Water Management offers a different way of thinking, he said, including: adaptive systems; managing across institutions; viewing systems holistically; involving all players; innovative technologies; water fit for the purpose; security through diversity; and maximizing benefits. Dr. Vairavamoorthy presented case studies featuring examples of leak management; technologies for producing different water qualities and recovering heat; decentralized systems; smart, "self-healing" pipes with sensors; and packages for water use/price (like cell phone packages). He encouraged the audience to consider how they would design their system again from scratch and then plan what could be done now.
Introducing a panel on "Enhanced Employee Engagement," Terry Breuck of EMA, Inc. said that while high employee engagement correlates with high organization performance, 70 percent of American workers are "not engaged" or "actively disengaged," according to a 2013 Gallup Research Report. Sue McCormick of Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, described her utility's flexible organization approach, reengineering of the organization and large scale employee engagement through teams for job and business design, asset management, communications and other efforts. Glen Gerads of Minneapolis Water Works gave a view of the system's strategic alignment initiative, which included stakeholders from across all divisions of Public Works as well as outside input to eliminate roadblocks to employee engagement through a new strategic plan, information technology strategic action plan and development of an internal business group. Cathy Bailey, who leads the transition team for combining the Greater Cincinnati Water Works and the Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati, described joint utility integration task teams formed to integrate functional areas. More than 260 employees from different work cultures cooperated on the teams, which invested them with ownership of the plan, motivated them for implementation and gave leadership insight to future leaders in the organization. Pat Maxwell of Southern Nevada Water Authority outlined a strategic planning effort that engaged all levels using the Gallup 12 questions on employee engagement and shared feedback/results in open discussions.
Drawing on research conducted for the Water Research Foundation, Manny Teodoro of Texas A&M University, presented results of a CEO survey that shed light on "The Utility GM of the Future." Today's water CEOs are overwhelmingly married, white males between the ages of 50 and 60, many without college educations or engineering degrees. Nearly two-thirds were promoted from within their organizations and have nearly 10 years tenure in their current jobs. The future GM is more likely to be a woman, to be younger, to have an advanced graduate degree and to be a policy leader.
Dan Roberts of the City of Palm Bay Utilities Department provided a first look at EPA's soon-to-be issued resource, "Moving Toward Sustainability: Water Sector Utility Roadmap of Effective Practices." The roadmap takes management areas identified in the Effective Utility Management framework at three business levels and provides a progression of scalable practices that illustrate practical opportunities for improving sustainability of utilities and communities.
Jason Boxt of The Glover Park Group covered research on "Consumer Attitudes About the Value of Water" conducted earlier this year for the Value of Water Coalition (see article on page 4). The studies found that water is not a top of mind issue, yet people have a general understanding of water processes and tend to think of water as a local issue with local solutions.
Carla Mitchell described Pinellas County's implementation of electronic CCR delivery with its 700,000 customers, which generated 832 website visits to view the report, five requests for hard copies and only seven complaints about electronic delivery.
Jeff Hughes of the University of North Carolina School of Government introduced "Defining a Resilient Business Model for Water Utilities," a project he led for the Water Research Foundation that examined utilities' ability to thrive in the presence of fiscal stresses. The discussion covered rethinking rate models, projections and cash flow plans, internal financial performance targets, fund balances, affordability programs, new product lines and pricing practices. There is no single strategy for revenue resiliency, he said, but practical practices include revenue diversity, redundancy, flexibility and foresight. A utility panel including John Carman of Raleigh Public Utilities Department, Barry Gullet of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities and Matt Jordan of Tampa Bay Water provided examples of current and emerging strategies to build a resilient business model.
In a session on "Smart Technology: Assessing System-Wide Deployment," Biju George of Greater Cincinnati Water Works urged utility leaders to reinvent decision making to maximize all their systems' assets and described Cincinnati's infrastructure data use evolution from measuring, monitoring and analyzing, through modeling and forecasting, to system optimization. Michal Koenig of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. identified water industry needs for improved sensor technologies, low power use devices and improved communication in the smart cities of the future.
In the first of three presentations on "Infrastructure Resilience and Renewal in Response to Extreme Events," Marcia St. Martin of New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board said after Hurricane Katrina the utility was determined to build smarter and more resilient infrastructure and business processes. This included a wetlands assimilation project, enhanced power generation reliability, green infrastructure, improved communications, a new rate structure, rebuilding bond ratings, conversion to electronic metering, establishing a business continuity plan and promoting the water system's role in economic development. Doug Yoder of Miami-Dade Water & Sewer Department explained his utility's adaptive management strategies for sea level rise/climate changes issues, particularly storm surge, including costs, mitigation alternatives, national policy issues and timing. Based on his experience with wildfires and as Fort Collins' incident commander during the recent floods in Colorado, Kevin Gertig of Fort Collins Utilities said training and exercises are critical to successfully rebounding from disasters. Gertig also highly recommended membership in WaterISAC and stressed the importance and value of developing strong partnerships with state and local emergency management offices, adopting the ICS-NIMS framework and extensive documentation of damages.
PowerPoint presentations from the 2013 Annual Meeting are at www.amwa.net/cs/2013_annual_meeting_presentations.