Building a Better Team

Meeting our objectives requires the cooperation and combined efforts of other industry organizations.

Interested in Education/Training?

Get Education/Training articles, news and videos right in your inbox! Sign up now.

Education/Training + Get Alerts

Many initiatives have been born from our efforts to set industry standards for the assessment and rehabilitation of underground infrastructure and to assure the continued acceptance and growth of trenchless technologies, more than we can possibly tackle on our own. For that reason, it is imperative for us to work closely with organizations with overlapping goals and objectives to best support our industry.

We have been building our relationship with the Water Environment Federation since we incorporated the Pipeline Assessment Certification Program into WEF's Operations Challenge two years ago. Each year the PACP portion of the collection event will grow more challenging, and we would ultimately like to include video coding.

During the 2012 WEFTEC in New Orleans, I had the opportunity to meet with several members of the WEF Collection Systems Committee, including Keith McCormick, the current committee chair; Christine Radke, the staff manager for the Collection Systems Committee; and several others to discuss increasing collaboration between NASSCO and WEF. Since then, there has been an open line of communication between NASSCO and WEF as we build the groundwork for projects that make good sense to pursue together. Some of these initiatives include:

  • Incorporating NASSCO training into events such as WEFTEC and the WEF Collection Systems 2013: Gold Nuggets of Knowledge. We look forward to offering NASSCO training for PACP at the collections conference in Sacramento, Calif., in June 2013.
  • Producing joint WEF/NASSCO webinars biannually to provide the latest information about rehabilitation technologies.
  • Continuing to present to local WEF member associations to provide basic information concerning PACP and ITCP (Inspector Training Certification Program) and rehabilitation technologies, as NASSCO's lateral committee did in November 2012 during the Chesapeake Water Environment Association's program, "It All Starts with Laterals."
  • Participating in the WEF Fly-In on April 17-18 to encourage our lawmakers in Congress to invest in infrastructure by supporting programs such as WIFIA and state revolving loan programs.

During virtually all of my PACP classes, I encourage students to get involved in NASSCO, their local WEF member association, or other associations that facilitate networking with professionals with similar goals and objectives. As underground technologies advance, it is important that national organizations such as NASSCO, WEF, NASTT, UCT and others work together to facilitate the success of these technologies and assure their continued acceptance and growth. And nothing facilitates these advancements like increasing the success rates of these projects.

NASSCO wants the industry to know that we are open to partnership with any and all organizations that share our common goal — to set standards and build awareness for trenchless technologies.

Ted DeBoda is executive director of NASSCO. He can be reached at director@nassco.org.



Discussion

Comments on this site are submitted by users and are not endorsed by nor do they reflect the views or opinions of COLE Publishing, Inc. Comments are moderated before being posted.