Below is a report of the 2nd Day of the National APWA Conference: General Session: Becoming a Community Builder – Leadership in Changing Times Day two of the 2011 APWA conference started with a general session, Becoming a Community Builder – Leadership in Changing Times, with keynote speaker, Ian Hill. He began by sharing…
Opening Day at 2011 APWA Congress & Exposition
This year's International Public Works Conference & Exposition is being held in Denver, Colorado. The event opened yesterday morning with a welcome by the outgoing president, George Crombie, and a transfer of leadership to the new president, Diane M. Linderman. First General Session – Michael Hayden The first general session followed with keynote speaker, Michael Hayden,…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 32 and 33
Day 32 & 33 I decided to combine yesterday's post with today's because wow – have I been busy! On Thursday I tried to finalize a few outstanding items before taking off a few days to attend conferences. I finalized a cost estimate for resurfacing a major roadway in the city. Then sent out the…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 31
Day 31 Seminar/Workshop Today I attended a workshop on Adaptive Signal Control – one of the technology innovations in the Every Day Counts initiative. The class was given by FHWA, and the city of Bolingbrook hosted the site. There were only about 20 people there: 3 from municipalities, 2 consultants, 4 from counties and personnel…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 30
Day 30 Jury Duty Not sure if anyone realized I never uploaded an article yesterday, but I didn't post because I was called for jury duty. So I had to take the day off to go to that. It was interesting – I got as far as being questioned as a possible juror, but the…
BRT, PRT, and Human Behavior
I've blogged for some time about the benefits of a Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system because I believe there really are few other solutions that truly offer a comparable solution to the car. Unfortunately moving over to this type of system would take considerable time and funding so I'm not sure I'll see it in…
Creating an Impressive Planning Commission Document
One of the many benefits I have working for my current employer is the opportunity to work with other staff members who excel in their profession. And even though they impress me on a daily basis, this week I was totally blown away by the awesome job our city planner did on his report to…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 29
Day 29 Automatic Meter Reading Research For about a year we've been researching automatic meter read (AMR) systems. Because our neighboring communities to the north and south have also been going through this process, we decided to combine our efforts and collaborate on the research. So as a group we've met with several vendors over…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 28
Day 28 Utility in our Right of Way with No Permit Today I spent a little more time looking into the utility that was placed in our right of way with no permit. We went out into the field to measure how far off the road the concrete handholes were poured. For most of the…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 27
Day 27 Road Project Now that our road project is substantially complete, we've been working on getting out a pay estimate. The project engineer prepared the estimate late last week and gave it to me yesterday. So this morning, I spent some time checking over the final quantities and comparing them to the original quantities…