Fortunately I rarely experience terrible customer service. But this weekend, I had one of those incidents where someone whose job it is to provide service chose instead to throw out subtle insults and avoid trying to understand or address a problem for which they are responsible. So I thought it'd be a good topic to…
The Lesson of Zork – Successful Training is in the Details
The problem with training material is that usually the people creating these documents know their subject matter inside and out. Now, I realize that most people probably wouldn't really think that's problem. After all, if we are new to a subject and looking for a teacher, we would most certainly seek out a "master" of…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 10
Day 10 Today was a great day – well most days are pretty good, but a lot of really good things happened today! There were some minor tasks I took care of like arranging for our interns to help out the water/sewer department by shooting some elevations for a sump pump line they were repairing…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 9
Day 9 Welcome to Day 9 – a day filled mostly with emails and meetings which is ok because it helped me take care of a lot of correspondence and make a pretty big dent in my emails. Parking Lot Meeting This morning a few of us met with the consultant who is designing the…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 8
Day 8 The great construction mystery: Why aren't the standard frames made to fit the standard inlets? Well, the inlet frames I picked out were placed on the structures today! I went out to work with the crew while they were placing them to make sure they fit and they were set at the…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 7
Day 7 Night Meeting for the Downtown Master Plan I'm late getting this post up because I attended a meeting of our Downtown Master Plan Committee. We are in the process of having a plan prepared for our downtown area which is a big deal for us because we have such an awesome downtown and…
Revving up the Street Sweeper
The other day I commented about the reviews written about a street sweeping game. The post ended up on GovLoop where Denise Petet added some great insights on how the game might be made more fun and engaging. She suggested adding more interesting cars, having pedestrians interact with the sweeper, and even allowing the sweeper…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 6
Day 6 Staff Development Meeting This morning we had our staff development meeting where all representatives of all departments meet to discuss active developments in our city. Today we talked about several proposed and on-going prospects along with some discussion of proposed changes to regulations. One of these issues related to the creation and management…
The Exciting Life of a Street Sweeper
I’ve never actually ridden in the street sweeper even though I’ve managed street sweeping operations in the past. But I can certainly imagine what it would be like. Day after day of driving about 10 miles an hour along the edge of every road carefully avoiding parked cars, pedestrians, and bicyclists. Then driving to the…
Setting Sustainable Water Rates
Raising water or sewer rates is never a popular move, and in this economy many have tried to avoid it as if they are fleeing from a zombie apocalypse. But for many utilities expenditures are exceeding revenues, and there's sometimes little choice other than a rate increase. You can only cut so much from a…