Reclamation’s Prize Competitions Program Is Boosting Innovation
T
he Bureau of Reclamation’s Research and Development Office is taking a unique tack to boost innovation: It has established a program of prize competitions on various topics, seeking to harness private citizens’ competitive instincts to advance the state of the industry. It has run competitions on topics including atmospheric forecasting, quagga mussel eradication, and canal safety, and pays out prizes adding up to as much as $800,000 in larger-scale contests. In this interview, Jennifer Beardsley, the office’s prize competition program administrator, tells us about the aims and results of this unusual program. Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position. Jennifer Beardsley: I started with Reclamation in 1992 as a student in our Columbia–Pacific Northwest Region. I have worked in multiple Reclamation offices and gained experience in environmental compliance, resource and technical services, coordination, and special projects. I also served as a liaison in the commissioner’s office in Washington, DC. These varied experiences led me to my current position in our Research and Development Office, where I lead the creative, problem-solving prize competitions program. Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about Reclamation and the Research and Development Office.
Irrigation Leader: How long has Reclamation’s prize competitions program been in operation? Jennifer Beardsley: Our prize competitions really took off when we were approached by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was seeking our partnership on a desalination prize. Our advanced water treatment research
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coordinator realized that this was an opportunity for Reclamation to tap into a community of problem solvers to work on areas we’ve struggled with for a long time. Reclamation received its first appropriations for the program in 2014. With that initial funding, we were able to stand up the program; introduce an online water prize page, which highlights all our competitions; and create the business practices to ensure that we are adequately planning and funding our competitions and that they are aligned with our mission. We first launched a competition of our own in 2015, and since then, we’ve launched about 30 competitions and awarded over $3.5 million in prizes. Irrigation Leader: How are the prizes for your competitions paid out? Jennifer Beardsley: The prizes are paid directly to the top eligible solutions as determined by an evaluation based on competition criteria and subject-matter-expert input. They are prizes, not grants or loans. We gained some attention at the beginning by doing some short competitions that only involved the submission of a paper. The winners of those got no-strings-attached prizes. Now, the program has grown quite a bit, and many of the prize competitions have multiple phases. Often, they begin with a paper submission; then, we will select 3 or 5 finalists out of the 30 or so applicants and ask them to develop their ideas into prototypes that can be demonstrated and tested; and then we will choose an overall winner. We may award prizes at multiple stages of those competitions. There is no requirement that the prize money be used to advance the applicants’ ideas, but often, irrigationleadermagazine.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE BUREAU OF RECLAMATION.
Jennifer Beardsley: Reclamation, established in 1902, operates and maintains water and power projects in the 17 western states. Reclamation is the largest wholesaler of water in the country and the second-largest hydropower producer. The Research and Development Office advances Reclamation’s mission through investments in science and technology activities to more effectively address challenges in water and power related to environmental issues, operations and planning, the development of water supplies, and maintenance. These investments occur in three programs: desalination and water purification (research), science and technology (research, prizes, and technology transfer), and open water data. Prizes came into the mix for Reclamation in 2014 with the America COMPETES Act.
In November 2021, prototypes developed by the Canal Safety Challenge finalists will be demonstrated and tested at Reclamation’s Hydraulics Laboratory in Denver, Colorado.
