In this issue’s story about the City of Santa Barbara, wastewater collection supervisor Alex Alonzo makes an extremely interesting observation. It has to do with electronic mapping and asset management and how they serve to elevate the capability of an entire team. Here’s what he says:

“It’s about turning your staff into professionals. Our biggest challenges haven’t been funding or lack of equipment … It’s been people resources and finding ways to share experience and knowledge — bringing new people up to speed, getting senior staff to share and document what’s in their heads, getting everybody on the same page.”

Alonzo and colleague Manuel Romero, wastewater collection superintendent, say they consider it a manager’s ultimate duty to create “a common body of knowledge for efficient business continuity.” With electronic data, accessible to all, they lessen the gap between the most- and least-experienced people on their team.

Expertise out the door

Now, think of the term “business continuity” and what it can mean as it applies to a major issue affecting municipal departments: The coming wave of retirements. When 30- and 35-year staff members leave, they take with them a lot of experience and knowledge — what’s often called institutional memory.

I spoke recently with an industry veteran who described a common scenario. A city crew is out in the street trying to determine the exact location of a pipe in an older part of town. A long-time employee looks around and says, “As I remember, we laid that pipe through there and tied it in somewhere right around here.”

Although that’s not as good as a GIS map, it’s a start. And what happens when all the people like him retire? Then the location of that old pipe becomes anyone’s guess.

In many communities, GIS initiatives are gradually backfilling all that knowledge. One thing GIS does is take valuable information out of people’s heads and put it where everyone on the team can use it. That way, when people retire, critical information remains behind on a computer hard drive.

Faster learning

None of this is to diminish the value of experienced people. Operating a collection system is partly art and partly science, and long-time team members are sure to know both sides better than people who have only been around for a few years.

But think about how much faster a team can learn, and how much better it can perform, if everyone can share the same information — if critical data is not trapped inside people’s memories (or on some dusty maps in a back room). GIS and asset management programs level the playing field, helping less-experienced people function more like seasoned veterans.

This concept is taking hold at wastewater treatment plants, some of which are now using technology to codify standard operating procedures. One such facility is the Littleton/ Englewood (Colo.) Wastewater Treatment Plant (featured in the November issue of Treatment Plant Operator, a sister publication to Municipal Sewer & Water).

There, a system called InfoNet is part of a Knowledge Management Transfer program. It captures and displays all the relevant information about every process and piece of equipment in the plant. The data includes standard operating procedures, equipment specifications, troubleshooting, maintenance history, and more. It’s a gigantic electronic operations manual.

A GIS initiative is similar in many ways. We report often on such initiatives on these pages. They’re underway in communities of all sizes, some using off-the-shelf programs, some relying on help from consultants, some using homegrown systems. There is probably no single best approach — it largely depends on the skill and creativity of in-house staff.

Getting going

The important thing is to begin, or if already begun, to intensify the effort. Every day brings valuable people closer to retirement. The statistics on the aging of workers in the wastewater industry are frightening.

A 2005 study by the American Water Works Association Research Foundation said that an estimated 50 percent of wastewater treatment operators would retire within the next five to seven years. One can easily guess that the picture looks much the same in the ranks of wastewater collection system and water distribution system technicians.

The sooner a community captures critical information about its infrastructure in permanent and accessible form, the better it can cushion the impact of long-time employees leaving.

Of course, that’s not the only reason to be serious about GIS and asset management technology. The technology simply helps a department function more effectively and deliver better service to the public.

In Romero’s words: “You have to add value into what already exists … The minute you stop adding value, that’s the minute your programs begin to lose support … Create an environment where everyone has an opportunity to achieve their professional objectives and become their personal best.”