We dive into a conversation with Kevin Ward, the General Manager of the Trinity River Authority Kevin oversees a vast operation that includes water treatment and wastewater facilities, serving a wide area and managing a significant budget. His journey from a temporary role in the water business to leading one of the top utilities in the country is a testament to his dedication and adaptability.
Kevin's career began out of necessity, leading him to the Texas Water Development Board and eventually to the Trinity River Authority. His work has significantly impacted water and wastewater management, emphasizing the importance of doing the job in front of you with excellence. Kevin highlights the evolution of the Trinity River Authority under his leadership, focusing on modernizing operations and fostering partnerships to enhance the organization's capabilities and impact.
The discussion shifts to the challenges and strategies in water and wastewater management, including infrastructure aging, cost, and emerging contaminants like PFAS. Kevin emphasizes the importance of data, technology, and innovation in addressing these challenges, showcasing projects like wastewater recycling and biosolids management as examples of the Authority's proactive approach.
Kevin also touches on the role of technology in improving operational efficiency and resilience, from data analytics to infrastructure materials. The conversation concludes with Kevin's perspective on leadership, employee development, and his legacy, highlighting his commitment to nurturing talent and advancing the water industry.
Throughout the podcast, Kevin's insights into the complexities of water management, his strategic approach to leadership, and his vision for the future of the Trinity River Authority are evident. His story is a compelling example of how dedication, innovation, and collaboration can drive significant advancements in the water sector.
More on Kevin: https://www.trinityra.org/leadership.php
Aquasight Website: https://aquasight.io/
21st Century Water - Kevin Ward
Speakers: Mahesh Lunani & Kevin Ward
[Music Playing]
Voiceover (00:01):
Tremendous challenges and opportunities exist right now for our nation's water infrastructure. In this podcast, the industry's top leaders and innovative minds share their knowledge and insights for ensuring our water systems are operating safely and efficiently.
These discussions are designed to motivate and create vibrant 21st century water systems and the innovative workforce required to lead and operate them.
This is 21st Century Water with your host, Aquasight founder, and CEO, Mahesh Lunani.
Mahesh Lunani (00:32):
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to the 21st Century Water Podcast, where today's guest is Kevin Ward, general manager of the Trinity River Authority, one of the top utilities in the country.
Kevin oversees an extensive operations, including four water treatment and five wastewater facilities, serving over 50 wholesale customers across 18,000 square miles.
His leadership effectively manages a budget exceeding $430 million and assets worth over 2.6 billion. Kevin also had a significant tenure as an executive administrator of the Texas Water Development Board.
Today, we'll discuss with Kevin on the challenges of managing such a vast infrastructure and his strategic approach towards managing water. Kevin has a bachelor's degree in accounting and petroleum engineering from the University of Texas, Austin.
Well, let's explore Kevin's meaningful, impactful journey in water management. Welcome, Kevin.
Kevin Ward (01:37):
Thank you.
Mahesh Lunani (01:38):
Well, I want to get right into it, and I want to thank you for joining this exciting session. From being a Texas Water administrator to a water authority CEO. Can you describe key highlights of this journey and what is the one thing you're most proud of?
Kevin Ward (01:55):
Well, I think that I started out temporarily getting into the water business because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And I started off before even, was at the Water Development Board in managing water and wastewater utilities.
Economy went bad, and I needed to have secure health insurance because I had my wife with one child and another one on the way. So, I went to the Water Development Board as a analyst and to manage a new program called the Clean Water State Revolving Fund.
I had no idea that that journey would lead me to where I'm at today, I can assure you. And I guess it just tells people that while you think you might have a plan or some kind of strategy for what you want to do to develop your career in your life, sometimes all you need to do is do the job that you've got in front of you, live your life and focus on doing the best you can at what you got.
And that led me to progressive advancement at the Water Development Board over 17 years to where I became the executive administrator. I was there for 23 years. So, it was one of those journeys that was just one step at a time, one position at a time, and preparing myself to run one of the largest financing agencies in the country at the time. And now today, it is too.
I was able there as an accomplishment to help create financial programs that exist today and were the foundation for the big ones that they're running today. They do billions of dollars’ worth of financing a year now.
When I was there, we just had hundreds of millions, and I had no idea that I'd get recruited to come to the Trinity River Authority and go right back into what I started out with, which was managing water utilities.
But between the 23 years of absence from the water utility and running water utilities, I had no idea that all of those skill that I learned at the Water Development Board and all the looks that I had inside the operations of so many entities across the state of Texas, would give me the ability to run this large river authority and to modernize it and to put it in place in a way in the industry that it would be able to grow all of its resources to help the basin in ways that previously it hadn't been set to do.
I really believe that the Water Development Board was a good experience. I think that I took that agency from a very small agency that only helped entities that couldn't finance things on their own to an entity that financed some of the largest regional entities in the state of Texas and the largest cities in the state of Texas for water and wastewater service.
But when it came to the Trinity River Authority, I found that a lot of the things that we had done at the state to modernize the security of our IT infrastructure, the accounting and finance structure, the modernization of every system that you have in this, take it up to a sophisticated level, hadn't been done.
We were still in what I call the dark ages, and it all needed to be done. So, I set upon a course to prioritize what needed to be done. Work with staff, develop the resources staff wise and financially wise, so that we could put these systems into place so the organization could do the work that it needed to do.
Not only would we be able to present ourselves as being the best of the best, but we really would be the best of the best. We'd be looking forward to that in the industry.
Another thing that I had learned at the Water Development Board is about partnerships. And we had partnered with a lot of federal agencies and state agencies.
Before I became the executive administrator, the person before me liked to be at odds with some of the federal agencies. He felt that we should view it almost as an adversarial type role.
When I got into the position, I immediately reversed that order and said, “No, we have to have partnerships and make this work.” So, working closely with EPA, Fish and Wildlife and these others were really what I felt would be the foundation for our agency to grow and to have a better impact on the state of Texas going forward. And it still exists there today.
But I told my folks that put boots in the river, that I wanted to put boots in the river with U.S. Fish and Wildlife, with the EPA, with Texas Parks and Wildlife, that I wanted them to partner with them and to work with them together on all of our permitting and data collection of which now has actually grown into even flood control. And they did.
I look at that as a legacy that I'll leave behind that exists within people. And maybe that's the one thing that I always will look back on. But looking at probably the three things that I'd say, modernizing programs, tools, the organizational structures to meet all the rapidly changing needs. That's one that I did at both.
Another one was changing the paying benefit structures. At the Water Development Board, it was a little harder because you had to go through the state system. That helped me when I came here because it made this one a lot easier. As I developed that, I realized that we were grossly behind the industry and pay structure as far as the total dollars.
And then, our benefits looked pretty good, but we didn't have a post-retirement benefit. What can we do for our employees to encourage them to stay longer? And then once they got to the point of retirement, be able to retire, we had a lot of people that were staying alone because they needed the health insurance benefits.
So, we came up with a post-retirement benefit here too. So, that's helped attract and retain people. As a matter of fact, that particular benefit is actually given us the ability to hire people in the 40-to-50-year range and have them stay here until they retire.
And then the last one, the third one would be really creating capacity within individuals with the proper skill sets, training, professional certifications, be able to manage these complex financial systems, project management systems, facility management systems, and the resources that we have so that we can use them to their maximum potential.
If you don't pay attention to those aspects of developing those parts of your business lines, you can't sustain them. When you turn away from them, they go away. But when you do that, you can turn away from them and they grow on their own.
Mahesh Lunani (08:14):
To me, what's fascinating, you had an accidental start in water, out of necessity. But then you're making a real difference on people, a real difference on processes and technology and tools.
Kevin Ward (08:28):
Yes.
Mahesh Lunani (08:28):
And that's an awesome story. So, I want to get to talk about TRA. It's got a storied history. Since Trinity River itself was discovered in 1690. What's the next 10 years look like for TRA?
Kevin Ward (08:41):
Well, we adopted our first strategic plan a few years back. We kind of plowed through it pretty quickly. We've got our second one going into place next year.
If I look down the road 10 years from now, we are going to have a much more robust set of business lines within the mid basin and the southern basin than we do now.
We've always had a lot of heavy focus on the northern region, which is basically the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, which is where we started. I mean, we started with the Central Regional Wastewater System.
The organization only dates back to 1955. The initiative to try to create what became the Trinity River Authority goes way back before then. And it started with trying to put in a canal system all the way up to grapevine with a series of blocks and dams along the way that would've brought navigation all the way up to the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. It died because it did not have support for taxes in the basin universally.
10 years from now, I hope to have navigation, but only up to Liberty, the Port of Liberty. I think that the organization is focused on that right now. We have an upcoming meeting on that tomorrow. We've been working with the Corps of Engineers through three different iterations in the federal legislation that controls these types of things.
I also believe that we're going to have flood control projects, and we're also going to have more water and wastewater facilities that are going to go in.
I do not believe in the mid basin that there's been a lot of focus on two major items. One is water supply and the growth that's going to occur up the I-45 Growth Corridor, and ultimately the I-69 Corridor. That's one. There's not been a lot of focus by the local entities and it needs to occur. They're going to need water supply and wastewater systems.
And then two, there's a real strong need in the basin for flood control facilities. I got to see a lot of what that was in the state when I was at the Water Development Board. If you look at virtually any other river in the state of Texas, you're going to see a lot of soil conservation service structures.
At the national level and the state level for the different authorities to deal with that, they usually have a plan for the whole basin that does flood and soil conservation projects in stages. They'll have them all identified, and then what they'll do is they'll build a few of them at a time, because once one fills up with soil, they have to build another one to keep the flood control going and the soil conservation going.
Because we don't have a lot of that, we're going to have a lot of siltation going to end up in Lake Livingston. And we do have a lot in headwaters right now. And it's causing a lot of problems for the landowners and the people that live on the river and in around the upper regions of the lake. And because of that we're going to have a lot of challenges with trying to control that soil.
So, I see that as being a potential. And certainly, we have really bad flooding problems in the central part of the Trinity River that has not been addressed. So, I think those are really the challenges.
Mahesh Lunani (11:50):
Right. No, it sounds like if I have to look at next 10 years, it's all about expansion.
Kevin Ward (11:54):
Yes.
Mahesh Lunani (11:55):
Especially in the mid basin and the southern basin. Now talking about your organization, it's very interesting how you divide by regions and services. How do you manage the complexity of TRA?
Kevin Ward (12:08):
Like most people do where you got a large elephant and you're trying to eat it and you do it one bite at a time. I feel like we are able to do very hands-on solutions for each of the various parts of our business lines.
You make sure that you've delegated effectively to individuals within the organization and within an area that has sufficient resources to manage those challenges for each part of your business.
So, I may be focusing in a day on getting an easement taken care of and negotiating an easement, trying to get a change order refined to the point where I can get it approved, negotiating with a contractor on how I want them to proceed with a solution to another problem. And then personnel issues and all that are associated with the various lines.
If you just treat each one individually and you move through it carefully, you know what you need to do. And generally, I either handle it myself quickly and give out the instructions and it's done, or I delegate it, or I have to pull together a meeting or a future meeting so that we can triage it and come up with what the solution will be.
Really, it's all problem solving. I think that's the best way to approach it. Now you have to have structure in place for the problems to come up. And that's been really clear to the staff that I manage.
So, I meet with my executive staff once every two weeks, everyone in the meeting. And we share with each other what the issues are for each of our areas, the ones that are providing services to all the areas.
So, we've got a lot of internal service partners. And so, those folks will talk about what they're working on and what they're going to need from everyone, or what they're going to provide to everyone, what the deadlines are, all that goes into it.
And then the individual ones, like the northern region, southern region, the people who do the construction, project design, construction assistance, PDCA is what we call it. They will report out on the challenges that they've got. And it serves two purposes.
One, it helps everyone be in tune to the pulse of the organization. That's the first thing. And the challenge that we have.
Two, if there is ability for someone to reach over and help, they can. And then it helps us manage resources because if we've got a big project coming up for the accounting division, for instance, and it's going to require a lot of the folks that are in each of the project plants, we call our plants projects.
But each of those areas for all of their assistance that are entering information to be tied up for a certain amount of time and there's something else going on at the plant, it provides that coordination.
That's what makes it fluid. And then you get into knowing when it affects an area such that I need to contact a board member. Because it's in their area, it's near their city, or it's in their county.
And the same thing goes for an item that really affects the entire organization that I need to talk to the president about, or one of the other board members that's ahead of a committee.
Open lines of communication, clear delegation, clear responsibility, lines of authority and responsibility, make it to where we can effectively manage multiple lines of business and do it pretty fluidly and without it being problematic when an issue comes up. We all know when it comes up just how to hit it.
Mahesh Lunani (15:34):
Well, I really like the leadership style. You want a platform where problems percolate up.
Kevin Ward (15:40):
Yes.
Mahesh Lunani (15:40):
Then you either dig in to solve the problem or you delegate to a person or a team to solve the problem. And that's a really good leadership style in terms of being hands-on where you need to, but make sure the infrastructure is placed where the problems are visible and come up.
Kevin Ward (15:57):
That's right.
Mahesh Lunani (15:58):
You talked about the board. Your board is sort of unique where the governor appoints all the board members. It's not unusual setup normally for the U.S. water agencies. How do you manage the interests of various counties?
Kevin Ward (16:11):
Yeah, so we have 17 counties, 18,000 square miles, and it's like a barbell. We have big projects on either end and they're different interests. They're different needs. The you manage it is you really learn your board members.
And keep in mind when you have a structure like that with a part-time board, and we meet once every other month to be able to take care of (in a holistic way), the needs for the entire basin. You have to individually take care of the needs that are specific to each county and also specific to each region.
And then balance it with the specific interest of a board member. Then you also have to help communicate to the leadership of the board that's at our executive committee, what those interests are so that when they're making decisions on structuring the committees and who serves on committees and all that, because that's how this works. They have the information they need.
So, we maintain a lot of data that we can provide when these events come up. So, once every two years, our organization has an election of the officers of the board and then appointment of the chairs of the committees of the board and the committees.
And we have these four standing committees. We have the Utility Services Committee, which basically is all of our construction projects for all of our operating projects. You have the Admin and Audit Committee, which does the budget, and of course all the administrative things, our benefits, our packages like that.
Then you have what's called a Resource Development Committee, which is anything new that's coming up as well as all natural resource matters. And then you have Legal and Public Policy.
So, as an example, as things come up, we're going through sunset. We're one of the last river authorities to go to through sunset. That belongs to the Legal and Public Policy Committee. So, they'll be dealing with that.
So, just like I delegate and come up with clear lines of authority and clear lines of delineation of responsibilities within the organization, we have a structure like that for our board in our bylaws. We've made very few changes to our bylaws ever and only a few since I've been here.
And I will say, when I came here after leaving the state of Texas and I saw the bylaws and I saw all of our procedures and our policies that were board policies, general manager policies, and then below that organizational policies, I told the board I was in heaven.
It's refined set of rules and procedures and structure. And all I have to do is make sure when something comes up, I adhere to this, and I can do it. And that's why we're able to do what we do. It's very well organized.
Mahesh Lunani (18:59):
And you had to make sure you run the orchestra valve.
Kevin Ward (19:01):
Yep. You got to run it. You got to run it. It's like being on a big machine. You got to know what pull and push.
Mahesh Lunani (19:08):
I want to talk about the waterwaste water challenges. And I can tell through this discussion, Kevin, you are a man of details. You are a man that are willing to go into depth or come back at the surface. But what are the top waterwaste water challenges for you? If you have to pick.
Kevin Ward (19:24):
I think everyone would agree. One is the increasing cost of infrastructure and the deterioration of the facilities that we had in place, the aging of them.
Years ago, they came up with the Nessie curve and they called it that because it looked like the Loch Ness Monster. And the problem with water and wastewater utilities is we have so much that's under the ground and people don't get to see it.
Well, when you have a sinkhole for wastewater line break collapse, you see it. And when you have flooding in the floodways in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex where I have most of my main lines, and I have a problem with a manhole that's not sealed properly and it breaks open, I have all that river water come into my wastewater treatment plant. And I got fish that are hitting my bar screens.
We have a lot of aging infrastructure and I think everyone in the industry's familiar with CMOM, which is basically a process that we all adhere to and we get schedules for.
We are now systematically going through all of our hundreds and hundreds of miles of pipelines that we have for wastewater, and we're fixing them, or we're putting in new lines in the ground parallel to them.
And some of it's for capacity, but a lot of it's just to replace it because for those that aren't familiar with that part of the industry and what we had in technology for wastewater lines, we all used steel reinforced concrete. So, we had concrete lines. And if you look at lines that we put in, in the 50s and the 60s, some of those lasted till today.
But when you start talking about what you put in the 70s and the 80s, not so much. In an effort to get costs down they changed the way they made concrete. And it's more susceptible to deterioration because of the hydrosulphite gases that are in our lines that are created.
So, we in the industry are trying to replace lines, and that's a big dollar price tag, and we're having to do it over a period of time. So, that's on the wastewater side.
On the water side, you got a lot of people put these water systems in place, designed them to meet capacity needs for at least 20 to 50 years. And some of the lines have been in the ground and a parallel line for 50 years.
And it's steel line, wrapped of course. And it's finally starting to break and deteriorate. And we're going to have to replace it. Well, guess what? There's been a lot of development since then. It's going to be expensive.
And also, we need a little bit more capacity now because even though a lot of what I've got for my water, and let's say in the metroplex is landlocked because they got one water plant in the metroplex, and it serves several cities.
You'd say, “Well, they're not growing anymore.” Well, they're not growing out anymore, but growing up. We're getting apartment complexes, condos, and things like that, and the water usage is going up and we're going to need to do some expansion. So, that cost is there. That's your number one challenge.
The next is, and it may go away, we don't know, PFAS, we used to say emerging contaminants. And that was our big challenge. And we all were worried about that. And now that's kind of gone by the wayside because EPA kind of dropped off a little bit and realized they didn't need to do as much there.
But now we're dealing with PFAS, and they've come up with some really stringent, almost unattainable standards. We've actually ordered two of the same kind of pieces of equipment to do testing for PFAS, so that we can do it for our customers and for ourselves so that we can meet these requirements.
But if PFAS requirements come through the way they look like they are right now, that's going to be a huge challenge for the industry. It's going to be a big thing.
Along those same lines, that plays into the wastewater system side from two perspective. One, just discharge of your treated wastewater. And also, the solids, the biosolids, we've had enough trouble in the industry on biosolids to begin with because people were a little concerned about it being used for beneficial use. But with PFAS, it may be a game changer there as well.
So, those are the real challenges in the industry right now. And I could go into the personnel challenges and all the other rest of it, but those kind of pale in comparison to the dollar costs we're going to have to do. They'll get there.
Mahesh Lunani (23:47):
No, the cost of the infrastructure, the aging, the PFAS, the biosolids, just every peer of yours is facing that in the United States today.
I want to kind of fast forward a little bit, circular economy. Because you already mentioned where your investments are going to go more or less. The circular economy is the big important topic, whether it's reuse water, generating gas, recovering nutrients, you name it. What's your view on it and what's your strategy and where's your focus area?
Kevin Ward (24:19):
There's a lot of things that we do at TRA that I'm going to say are passive strategies. Because what we try to do first is get our job done. And all of these things that come along, like what you just mentioned, they sound great, and they give you a skeleton to build things on.
So, by saying, okay, we're going to try and make a circular economy. It makes you think of how to fit different things that you're doing on that. And you can call it strategies if you want. But I'll give a couple examples of what we're doing.
One, we started way before I got here with the recycling of the wastewater itself, reuse as we call it in Texas. Now for those who are aware of policy initiatives that go on the Texas Water Conservation Association. And I'm an officer for that organization. I'm on the executive committee anyway. And I'm also chair of the River Authority panel.
We tried a long time ago to come up with a policy we could recommend to the state on reuse and permitting. Couldn't do it, couldn't get an agreement there because the different people had different views of what needed to be done.
But years ago, the metroplex folks that had most discharges all got together realizing that if they didn't do something soon, they would be constantly protesting each other. Permits. They came up with an agreement, they wouldn't do that. And everyone then applied for permits for their discharges.
And for Trinity River Authority, they picked four wastewater treatment plants that equated to about 230 MGD in growing and got a permit for that. Well, in order to preserve the permit and not really have anything other way to use it right away, they put it down in Lake Livingston.
And so, it became a part of what would help with the yield on Lake Livingston during drought times. But there was an agreement there. They would move at least 70% of it up to the metroplex. It was an agreement as a compromise and settlement agreement, I guess we would call it. But it was with the City of Houston on the permit.
So, when I got here, I had to go forward with the permitting process and move that. So, up to the metroplex, we've moved it up to the metroplex, but we don't have 230 MGD worth of discharge right now. We have more like 170 MGD.
So, currently we've got a contract with the North Texas Municipal Water District for 50 MGD. And in that 50 MGD they can peak at pretty high levels that are a lot higher than that on any daily basis.
We're working with the Tarrant Regional Water District right now to try to get the rest of that permitted because they would like to have the rest of it. And as it grows, there'll be challenges of course. That's one thing we've done for circular. That was way back. It started off many years ago.
Okay, then let's go to the biosolids. We were one of the entities that went right out and started doing land application. We wanted to have beneficial reuse. We worked with Oscar Renda company who did Renda Environmental Inc. So, REI, to do that recycling of our biosolids.
And we were only doing lime stabilized biosolids. We weren't even putting it through digesters. I mean, when I got here, I couldn't believe that. I mean, one point they did have digestion, but they felt it was going to be too expensive to keep doing that.
Well, they did a study and determined that we could go forward and try to install THP or thermal hydrolysis, thermal hydrolysis is something used widely in the European theaters. What it does is it reduces the amount of your biosolids by about half, which we needed because we were running into a lot of problems with some of the counties.
There was odor problems, there was concerns about so many trucks going in and out. So, now we actually have THP, we reduced the amount that we're producing by half and now we're moving over into the biogas arena because as you know with the recent initiatives that they've had at the federal level, they do want you to do enhanced biogas production or hydrolyzed sludge basically, so that you'll have a good biogas.
And they want it refined of course to about 98, 99%, which we're going to get it up there. But we currently are working with Ameresco to recycle our biogas. Some of it we may use, and we always envision we would use to fire the boilers for THP.
So, we've almost got a sustainable circular envelope already for a lot of what's going on out at cruise. Everything from the effluent going into the river and coming back and being reused to the biogas that we hopefully in two years we'll have a hook up to our gas provider to where we can recycle it back into the gas system, to using it to where we basically are firing our boilers with it if we want to do that.
And then the biosolids themselves, we're doing a regionwide study of all our wastewater treatment plants to determine do we need to put a regional facility and with a second unit that we would have to thermal hydrolysis for all of that sludge because currently it's going to landfills and landfill cost is becoming expensive.
So, that's why I say it's passive. I didn't look at that new term and initiative that's come out that started writing papers on. We just are doing this organically because we know it's the right thing to do.
We're also going to be looking at everything we can green wise going forward. And the same thing will go hold true for any of the operations we're doing for water. To the extent we can do it, I find that a little bit more challenging to do something circular on the water, to try to make it more green. But that's where we're at.
Mahesh Lunani (29:53):
The word circular economy is just more descriptive, but the actions below it is what's really matters. Sounds at TRA already a terrific story underway in that space.
I want to shift gears. I want talk about technology and the role of technology in the water industry. And what are you most excited about?
Kevin Ward (30:14):
I guess measurement devices and the use of data to be able to manage our facilities. That, and of course the security that you need for those systems itself. I think that's moving forward rapidly and keeping the staff here that we need to be able to manage those systems is a challenge.
But it's absolutely essential because that gives us the information, we need to be able to adapt the new physical technologies that are out there like PHP. I mean, believe me, it is a sophisticated machine with a lot of moving parts and some of it's even dangerous and it's a lot to be done.
Just trying to solve some of the problems you have within that treatment system. We're going to be adding ferric. So, we had to put in a new ferric tank and feed system for our wastewater system in order to make that system work better.
Got to cool it during the summertime. Now they don't have a lot of THP in the southern climates like we have. We're pioneering how we're going to cool that, and we bring in chillers for temporary basis to cool that before it goes into the digestion.
Try to not go to a thermophilic process, stay in a mesophilic process. There are a lot of challenges there. The technologies to get there require all the data. They require a lot of SCADA systems and the design of SCADA; people don't realize this. They're on the outside looking in, people inside looking out.
We build it as it's needed. We're seeing this as we go along. We're seeing so many more data points on our systems that we need to monitor in order to be able to refine our operations and make it more efficient, less costly and more reliable. Resilient. And to be effective, be sustainable during different environmental conditions.
The response that we have to power outages, things like that, that we're seeing. We can argue all we want to about climate change or climate variability, whatever you want to do to make it acceptable in the form you're in. Call it anything you want.
The bottom line is for us in the industry, it's what happens and when it happens, we've got to be able to respond to it. We can't have a shutdown. I cannot afford to have wastewater going out into the rivers and streams that were used for water supply.
I can't afford that, and I certainly can't afford for me not to be able to disinfect it and then remove the disinfection so that I can make sure that the fish are okay and the environment's still good.
There's so many things that we do. And when you're talking, like in our case, an average flow of 135 million gallons a day out of one plant with peak flows over 400 million gallons during a flood condition. These are the real problems we have.
And so, if we're going to have more floods and we're going to have more droughts, where the lines get stressed in the ground, we've got to have more focus on — and you can use the buzzword resiliency all you want, but kind of have pipes in the ground that stay together.
And so, we've already adapted new technologies for the pipe already and the 3D production that we have on it, man, it's great. All of these junctures and manhole systems and things that we have right now, they can be made in a computer, put together. And now we've got our FRP pipe going into FRP junctions and before we had it going into concrete junctions.
And you know what's going to happen with that eventually. One of them is going to give, and it's usually the FRP where it goes in and then you got a break and a leak, and you got problems.
So much of what we're doing right now is going to make systems last so much longer than they did before. A simple thing, this is going to sound crazy, but some of the problems we're having on our water lines right now are because when they unloaded pipe 50 years ago, they dumped it on the ground. I mean, think about how simple that is.
Mahesh Lunani (34:15):
Yeah, it is crazy, isn't it? I mean, from what I'm hearing on this, the complexity of science, the drowning in data, this is the kind of technology that you are energized and excited by that. How do you mine through all this stuff to make sure you build a resilient infrastructure?
Kevin Ward (34:35):
Yeah, we embrace it, we love it. We look at it as a challenge and a responsibility, an obligation. If it's there, we can use it, my gosh, we better.
Mahesh Lunani (34:45):
And Kevin, I can really feel the energy in you as you are excited about some of the things. Lots of buzz around AI. Where do you see applicationary?
Kevin Ward (34:55):
We brought in house our modeling for the hydraulics on our systems, both wastewater and water. And so, now when we're looking at sizing a line or developing a part of a system, instead of just maybe running four or five different data runs and simulations of what might happen on a flow or whatever, we can do an infinite that if we want.
I mean, we don't, we'll stop it in a few hundred, but we'll run it in a couple of different directions to get to what we believe is an optimum set of options for us to size those pipes and all. So, we're already using it like that.
A little bit for writing. But we have to be careful with that. Also, we can mine our own data with it and use it for that.
We certainly haven't outlawed it; we wouldn't do that. I just look at it as a new tool in the toolbox. Quite honestly, in some respects, it's an old tool in the toolbox. There's a lot of it that's already existed.
For instance, you're at your house. You've been talking about a problem with your sprinklers. Next thing you know, Alexa has put about six different ads on the screen. Now it's kind of creepy, but hey, if you don't want to do it, you can cut it off. I mean, you can cut off AI.
And I think there's some challenges in the engineering industry with regard to it because it could result in some copyright infringement and things like that, but they're already focusing on it now too.
This is really interesting because I'm on a lot of senior boards in engineering, even though I'm not an engineer. And with the ASC as they look at it, the one challenge for the engineering community is, was it due to billable hours, I mean, it could make it a lot more efficient.
But then there's some things with proprietary stuff, if you are using AI to move things quicker through your process and you still want to charge for a product. So, there's a lot of looking at that going on right now in the industry. And it'll be interesting to see where this goes.
Mahesh Lunani (36:49):
I think, listen, every industry gets disrupted. The engineering consulting firm will get disrupted. There's no doubt in my mind because for the last 2, 3, 5 years they've been growing, and they've been growing because a lot of agencies didn't have engineers.
Kevin Ward (37:05):
Right.
Mahesh Lunani (37:05):
At some point that part of the work is going to get super efficient. And they just start to adapt. And we've seen this across all sectors.
Kevin Ward (37:13):
Well, you need engineers, you got to have engineers. I'm a big advocate of the engineering profession and I always will be because I try to tell people when they get upset about how the engineering proposals work and all that, that they don't have to bid. I said, “Yeah, but you don't want the bridge to fall down.”
Mahesh Lunani (37:33):
That's right. No, no. You need the science. There's no doubt you need the science. As we kind of wrap up this conversation, just a couple of questions. One is, in your strat plan you put significant actions to attract and retain employees. And you said that also during your time in the Texas Water Board. Can you tell me in a brief way what's worked and what hasn't worked for you?
Kevin Ward (37:56):
Absolute pay increases don't work. Incentive pay increases, like for performance work, from both perspectives, your board of directors as well as your staff. We don't do COLAs; there's no cost of living increases here. We don't do that kind of stuff.
Pay equity, that works, you have to have pay equity. You have to also be able to compare different professions and the utility of it by having studies done in the industry to see relatively what the industry's paying for different types of work. So, that's worked.
Having a very clear structure that is in place for your organization with the management. One of the things that was here that when I got here, and I always tout it with my board, is I can't just reorganize TRA.
A lot of times at the state, new guy came in, reorganized a whole agency, brought in some of their people. Dug, did whatever they wanted to.
I got here. If you want to reorganize, then you've got to put together that proposal to change your management organization structure and bring it to the board of directors. If you want to add a new management position that's not in your structure, got to take it to the board of directors.
So, that is a discipline. If you can't explain it in a way that makes sense to your governing board, then you don't need to be doing it. And that also makes the staff respect it more because it's not just that, oh yeah, general manager did this, it's board of directors did this. So, that worked.
The other thing that's worked is I really started looking at the benefits. Now I lucked out because I was able to buy some years of service from the state of Texas and retire and keep my health insurance from the state of Texas in that retirement who I don't participate in the health insurance program here.
So, that gave me an independent way to make recommendations to the board of directors that would not be self-serving to me. So, they knew that if I was recommending a change, that it was based on what I felt was good for the staff, not for me.
That progressed over time how much they'd have to pay for their portion versus how much the organization would pay the dependents coverage, we a hundred percent cover our staff coverage. That worked. We probably 70% cover the dependents coverage, that works.
But we didn't have a post-retirement benefit. And we had people staying here for a long time because they were so concerned about their health, and it was mostly because of medicines. So, I looked at what I did at the state, they gave me a benefit. And then when I kept to Medicare age, I had to take Medicare and then I had a Medicare supplement on top of that.
Well, I went to our provider on health insurance and said, “Can we do something like this?” Well, you can't require people that are working for you to go on Medicare. And Medicare doesn't want that. They don't want to have to pick them up, so they want you to pay for it. Okay, fine. That makes sense.
But you can, once they retire, if they were retired, you can require them to do that. So, we came up with a post-retirement benefit for those before they turn 65 and after they turn 65. If you reach the rule of 80, which is your years of service added to your age, then you're eligible for this benefit and we'll cover you and your spouse in this program.
And once you hit Medicare age, you have to go on Medicare and then we'll pay for your insurance coverage for the Medicare Advantage plan. And it includes the actual prescription drugs as well.
You wouldn't believe the effect that that had, the effect that it had was from a recruiting perspective, we suddenly could bring the belly back in.
So, if we had lost some good people at 30-years-old to 40-years-old, we might replace them with someone who was 40 in the 40s because they could reach that rule of 80 easily by the time they're ready to retire and have a post-retirement benefit. So, it's not the same as a pension from a city, but it's post-retirement benefit. That's one thing it had.
The other was for these folks that were 65, 68, 70-years-old, they could retire and suddenly we would be able to rehire at a little bit lower level and salary than we were paying the tenured employee and give them that career path and that ability to want to stay.
So, it's had a profound effect on us. So, those are the things that have worked. And then also comparing our benefits to everyone else to make sure that just all of regular medical benefits for dental, for eyesight, for hearing, for whatever, preventative health, all that are competitive with the other entities that we compete for people in the industry, basically.
Mahesh Lunani (42:41):
Well, I can tell Kevin, you deeply studied this topic and you put in place all 360-degree aspect to compensation, to post-retirement, to benefits where it’s compelling to attract employees. I wanted to ask you, what do you want your legacy to be?
Kevin Ward (43:01):
People. I think that I've been able to help people develop their careers and their skill sets and given them opportunities to develop by putting them into leadership positions more at the state and national level, not just at our organization.
And giving them those opportunities, looked for those opportunities for them, saw that they were at that stage where they could do it. And leaving that legacy of all these people to carry the industry forward is the best thing I could do.
I mean, one time someone asked me when they did an interview with me before I left the waterboard, like, “What's your greatest goal as a manager or a leader?” And my answer was to have someone pass me up. And they were like, “Well, why would you want that?” And I said, “Well, that means I did the best job I could do.”
Mahesh Lunani (43:53):
Right. No, this is a great point you mentioned, Kevin, because in my own organization as a CEO of Aquasight, I often tell people that your job is to get me fired because that's the day you don't need me.
Kevin Ward (44:07):
Yeah. That's right.
Mahesh Lunani (44:09):
That's true for all of us. Listen, I had a terrific conversation, Kevin. You joined this career in the water industry by accident. But if I look at the list of achievements, just listening to you in terms of how you go about solving problems, looking at the infrastructure, attracting employees, looking at latest technology, and even though you claim you're not an engineer, your deep appreciation for science and what it means to improve our infrastructure is phenomenal.
So, I hope the audience listening here today truly appreciate not only the kind of person you are and the impact you've done in the state of Texas and at TRA, but just how you go about addressing challenges in the sector.
So, I want to appreciate and thank you for being part of the podcast and more importantly, sharing an amazing set of insightful thoughts.
Kevin Ward (45:02):
Thank you.
Voiceover (45:03):
Join host and Aquasight founder and CEO Mahesh Lunani for another episode of 21st Century Water. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, or Stitcher, produced by JAG in Detroit Podcasts.