Project Management for Water and Wastewater Utilities

October 19-20, 2023 | Online :: Central Time

1023-water-project-management

“This course provided a great blend of technical skills and soft skills for effectively (and kindly) managing water and wastewater projects.” Water and Wastewater Assistant Superintendent, PUD #1 Clallam County

“I attended this class to better understand the PM process, learn how to support the PM’s within our Agency, and how to anticipate the needs of the PM to keep Projects moving forward. Marlee Franzen was really engaging and offered a great training program to help me meet these goals. Well worth the time and effort.” Operations Coordinator, Sonoma County Water Agency

“Training was well structured; content was robust.” – Pretreatment Coordinator, City of Sumner

A great project manager enables their team to take on new challenges, has the foresight to minimize resident disruption and customer risk, and understands the tricks of the trade to keeping project momentum up.  When it comes to water and wastewater project implementation there is more to consider than the data behind the solution. Enabling a project to stay on schedule, communicating with key stakeholders, and allocating resources efficiently and effectively are all critical responsibilities of a project manager.

EUCI’s Project Management for Water and Wastewater Utilities course will cover the hard basics of defining and closing a project while driving home the importance of refining the soft skills that bring an idea from the drawing board to your residents’ backyard. This course will enable you to assess the feasibility of a project and define (or refine) your plan. The instructor will layout strategies for the following:

• Piloting a project
• Identifying new opportunities
• Mitigating risks
• Promoting your team to take ownership of their work
• Defining the intangibles of customer communication

Join EUCI’s Project Management for Water and Wastewater Utilities course to learn how to go beyond the data and understand the critical responsibilities of a project manager.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to successfully:

• Assess the feasibility of a project
• Identify the scope of their work
• Develop a task list and customize it to work for you
• Define roles and responsibilities and understand their importance
• Review the documentation process and know what is important to include
• Layout a schedule and its components
• Identify and mitigate risks
• Improve internal communication skills and effectiveness: keeping enthusiasm up, handling conflict, identifying new opportunities
• Improve external communication skills and effectiveness: when to deliver a message, what to say, and how to say it
• Complete projects with limited resources
• Utilize communication skills as a method for building momentum
• Choose the best method for communicating with the public
• Decide on next steps when the plan changes
• Discuss how to lessen impacts on customers
• Identify how to utilize humor and positivity to incite productivity and enthusiasm
• Review the purpose of a pilot project
• Identify how to set up a pilot project

Thursday, October 19, 2023 : Central Time

Short breaks will be taken throughout each session (30 minutes total)

Introduction to Project Management

• What are your most pressing questions about project management?
• What is a project manager?
• Program vs. Project
• Components of a project
• Budget and cost estimation

Defining Your Project

• Who are your stakeholders?
• What is the scope of your work?
• Is it feasible?
• Communication and documentation
  • What is important to document?
  • K.I.S.S. – Keeping it Simple, Seriously

Controlling Your Project – Part One

• Stakeholder Engagement
  • Internal: Communication, keeping enthusiasm up, handling conflict, and identifying new opportunities
  • External: when to deliver a message, what to say, how to deliver it
  • Feedback: how to receive it and when to incorporate it into your project
  • Notification Strategies
• Monitor and Control Project Work
  • Task List
    • What does a task list look like?
    • How to customize it to work for you
• Manage Change
  • How do you handle project change?
  • Identifying and mitigating risks

12:00- 1:00 p.m. :: Lunch Break

Controlling Your Project – Part Two

• Managing project quality
• Managing resources
• Schedule & time management

Best Kept Secrets of Project Management

• Certification
• Project Management vs. Emergency Management
• Bonus – Agile Project Management: What is it? How might it help Water Utilities?

Exercise: Identifying Key Stakeholders and Creating a Communication Strategy  

This group exercise will put you in a real-life project management scenario with emphasis on stakeholder communication. Each project benefits and impacts different stakeholder groups depending on the nature of the project. What sort of projects will impact your internal teams and how do you work to better support them? When will a project transition from inconveniencing residents to benefiting them and how do you get that message across? We will work through a series of scenarios and share the solutions that bring a project to life.

 

Friday, October 20, 2023 : Central Time

Short breaks will be taken throughout each session (15 minutes total)

10 Best Tips and Tricks to Keeping Project Momentum Up

• Leadership
• Resourcefulness
• Relationships
• Good habits

Piloting Projects and Shifting Organizational Perspective on New Processes

• The true purpose of pilot projects
• How to set up a pilot project
• Failure and acceptance
• Having fun in the process
• Examples

Exercise and Simulation: What Does Your Project Look Like?

This project simulation will apply the tools covered over the past day and a half. From deciding on the feasibility of a project to piloting one, how do you lay out your schedule, mitigate risks, decide on what to document, and reschedule your project when an unanticipated challenge arises? In this group exercise, our project management curriculum will be put to work as we develop a plan (sometimes on the fly) and communicate it effectively to our key stakeholder groups.

Marlee Franzen, PE, PMP, Manager, Transmission with Fairfax Water

Marlee Franzen has 29 years of engineering experience, almost all of it in the utility field, working on topics ranging from water conservation, water, and wastewater development, drinking water quality, emergency repairs, and operations and maintenance projects. For almost ten years, Ms. Franzen has been an operations manager.  Her first three years she focused on water distribution maintenance. For the remaining time, she has been working on water distribution system operation.  While having bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemical engineering, she is a licensed Civil Engineer and has worked for five utilities: Goleta Water District, Colorado Springs Utilities, Arlington County, VA, DC Water and Fairfax Water.

We will be using Microsoft Teams to facilitate your participation in the upcoming event. You do not need to have an existing Teams account in order to participate in the broadcast – the course will play in your browser and you will have the option of using a microphone to speak with the room and ask questions, or type any questions in via the chat window and our on-site representative will relay your question to the instructor.

• IMPORTANT NOTE: After November 30 you will not be able to join a Teams meeting using Internet Explorer 11. Microsoft recommends downloading and installing the Teams app if possible. You may also use the Edge browser or Chrome.
• You will receive a separate email with a unique link to a personalized landing page which will include links to join all sessions of this event.
• If you are using a microphone, please ensure that it is muted until such time as you need to ask a question.
• The remote meeting connection will be open approximately 30 minutes before the start of the course. We encourage you to connect as early as possible in case you experience any unforeseen problems.

Please Note: This event is being conducted entirely online. All attendees will connect and attend from their computer, one connection per purchase. For details please see our FAQ

If you are unable to attend at the scheduled date and time, we make recordings available to all attendees for 7 days after the event

REGISTER NOW FOR THIS EVENT:

Project Management for Water and Wastewater Utilities

October 19-20, 2023 | Online

Your registration may be transferred to a member of your organization up to 24 hours in advance of the event. Cancellations must be received on or before September 16, 2023 in order to be refunded and will be subject to a US $195.00 processing fee per registrant. No refunds will be made after this date. Cancellations received after this date will create a credit of the tuition (less processing fee) good toward any other EUCI event. This credit will be good for six months from the cancellation date. In the event of non-attendance, all registration fees will be forfeited. In case of conference cancellation, EUCIs liability is limited to refund of the event registration fee only. For more information regarding administrative policies, such as complaints and refunds, please contact our offices at 303-770-8800

Credits

EUCI is accredited by the International Accreditors for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) and offers IACET CEUs for its learning events that comply with the ANSI/IACET Continuing Education and Training Standard. IACET is recognized internationally as a standard development organization and accrediting body that promotes quality of continuing education and training.

EUCI is authorized by IACET to offer 0.9 CEUs for this event.

Instructional Methods

This program will use PowerPoint presentations and group discussions, as well as active participation.

Requirements for a Successful Completion of Program

Participants must login each day and be in attendance for the entirety of the course to be eligible for continuing education credit.

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Upon successful completion of this event, program participants interested in receiving CPE credits will receive a certificate of completion.

Course CPE Credits: 10.5
There is no prerequisite for this Course.
Program field of study: Specialized Knowledge
Program Level: Basic
Delivery Method: Group Internet Based
Advanced Preparation: None

EUCI is registered with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) as a sponsor of continuing professional education on the National Registry of CPE Sponsors. State boards of accountancy have final authority on the acceptance of individual courses for CPE credit. Complaints regarding registered sponsors may be submitted to the National Registry of CPE Sponsors through its web site: www.nasbaregistry.org

 

Who Should Attend

This course is designed for anyone who wishes to obtain a basic understanding of project management for water and wastewater utility development.