FWEA Focus—Sondra W. Lee

FWEA FOCUS Facility Staff is Key to Successful Projects

Sondra W. Lee, P.E.

President, FWEA

Many facility projects come about by a permit requirement and can feel like a burden to the people who operate and maintain the facility. These projects not only impact the capital budgets of utilities, but also future operating and maintenance budgets. Inevitably, the facility will undergo a period of disruptions and extra work loads during construction. In addition, the project may require the facility staff to operate and maintain processes completely new to them.

These challenges, though daunting, can provide an excellent opportunity to enhance both team dynamics and individual skill sets. With planning and teamwork, facility projects can serve not only to improve infrastructure needs, but also provide the groundwork for a highly engaged and motivated workforce.

The Thomas P. Smith Water Reclamation Facility (TPSWRF) in Tallahassee underwent a major facility upgrade between 2009 and 2015. The facility was a construction site for six years, during which it remained online.

Here are a few tips that were implemented on this project and helped to ensure successful completion.

Plan Beyond Permit Requirements

Be sure to design with the facility’s end user in mind. A well-designed project not only meets permit requirements, but should not be too difficult or expensive to operate and maintain.

During the TPSWRF upgrade project, a lot of work on the influent ponds was required. A maintenance worker requested to replace the overland hoses used to empty the ponds with underground piping. The prior method was labor-intensive, required traffic rerouting, and at times, resulted in leaks. Thanks to his feeling comfortable to make suggestions, the process of emptying these ponds is significantly improved, even though it was not a permit requirement. Furthermore, the positive impact on employee engagement from having one’s ideas valued and applied cannot be overstated.

It’s important that the facility staff be directly involved in projects and a diverse team of work skills should be incorporated. For example, at the TPSWRF, an operator, a member of maintenance, an electrician, and someone involved with instrumentation and controls are all included on the project team. Supervisors of these four groups were notified of upcoming projects and they decided who to include on the review team.

Team Involvement Throughout the Project Process

Now that you have your site’s subject experts defined, be sure to include them in the project process as early as possible and keep them engaged all the way through the completion of construction. Facility teams can often provide fresh perspective, leading to great design ideas. This will lead to a better design, a site that is easier to manage, and a team that is excited to take on the new systems.

Scope Development

The utility’s project manager should discuss the scope of the project with the facility team as it’s being developed. Aside from helping the consultant gain a better picture of the problem to be solved, bringing the team in on the scope development level helps everyone clearly understand the limits of the project scope, alleviating scope creep throughout the design process.

Sometimes a new issue at the facility is discovered during scope development. Including the team members this early in the process gives them an opportunity to request improvements to a system that may have been left out of the original scope. For instance, the team may bring up issues related to the system’s auxiliary equipment, or to adjacent systems.

Design Review

As the design gets underway, give the facility’s project team an opportunity to review the design phase submittals. Describe the goals of each phase. For example, you may note that 30 percent is often a conceptual phase, 60 percent is one of the last opportunities for any large changes to take place, and the 90 percent plans provide the electrical, instrumentation, and control details.

Take extra time with the team members. Don’t forget that reading plans is not second nature to a lot of people. Instead of asking the team members if they understand how to read plans and section views, simply take the time to explain what is being shown at every review meeting. It may also be beneficial to meet with team members one on one. This way, you can get a feel for how comfortable they are with reading plans and encourage them to provide input on the design.

Consider holding an internal review meeting with your facility team before providing review feedback to the consultant. This is a good time to gather collective thoughts and iron out disagreements prior to a review meeting with the consultant.

Keep in mind, some staff may not be comfortable speaking up in front of the consultant, but they may be willing to speak up at the internal review meeting. Preferably, the team should attend the consultant review meetings, too. Detailed questions may need to be answered, which allows the entire team to participate in the decision-making process.

Construction Phase

Encourage teams to visit the site throughout the construction phase. During the major plant upgrade in Tallahassee, displays of the current construction activities were placed in the lunchroom. There was a lot of excitement from the facility staff as the new structures were being built. In fact, one team member was assigned to work offsite for

a few months and he voluntarily found the database with the daily construction photos and would take the time to view them each day.

By the time training, commissioning, and start-up begins, facility team members are more familiar with the equipment and the layout of the new process. This provides a good foundation to begin the training phase as construction winds down and the new facility is completely turned over to the facility staff. Their participation throughout the project will help crews operate and maintain the facility for years to come.

Check in With Facility Staff

Throughout the project cycle, and especially once the project is wrapped up, ask your team members for input on the overall process. Also, during the project, keep in mind that they still have their normal facility duties to maintain.

This past year, there were five separate projects under design for the city’s facility. Key members of the facility were asked to attend many meetings to provide input on these projects. When I apologized for requesting so many meetings, they surprised me by enthusiastically stating that the process was very helpful for them.

An interesting evolution over the past few years by staff was the desire to review plans through online meetings. Prior to 2020, we would all crowd around the plans table to discuss new projects. During the distancing requirements of 2020 we began to use Microsoft Teams for plans review. Once restrictions were removed, our facility staff asked to continue using the online platform for the plans review, as everyone has a better view of the plans using this method. Also, the team supervisors encouraged their team members to join in on the meetings, thus introducing the new processes to more of the facility staff.

Enthusiastically promoting employee engagement can pay huge dividends. Often, you will achieve an end product that everyone is proud to be associated with. Project managers at utilities and consultant project managers should reach out to facility staff to get them involved. Early introduction of a project engages facility team members, which will lead to a process that is better designed, operated, and maintained. This provides a great opportunity to expand the knowledge of the facility team and could potentially stretch out the time before that next major facility project is needed.  S

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