Our Tech Talk article this month, written by a group of professionals from Texas, makes excellent points about improving communication between engineers and operators. Why on earth shouldn’t those two disciplines talk constantly as plans are made for a new treatment plant or upgrade?
Engineers often get accused of living in ivory towers, designing things that don’t necessarily work in the real world. But the best engineers I’ve known are all about creating designs that solve problems for the people on the front lines.
On the other hand, stories in TPO have often cited cases where engineers asked to solve a problem proposed a solution costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, only to have operators solve it for a small fraction of that amount. Clearly, disconnects happen.
Bigger lessons
So the article by our Texan friends is worth a read for engineers and operators alike. It also raises a larger point about communication among clean-water professionals in general. One of the most common plaudits we hear for top operators we profile is that they are excellent communicators and team builders.
While they do it in different ways, they manage to get everybody on their teams pulling in the same direction. It makes a person wonder: Is that the norm? Or is it the exception? I heard recently from Rayburn Casey Hall, retired after 37 years as a wastewater operator in Tennessee.
His experience says there is some tension between operators and mechanics. “When I first became an operator, I thought it was my title, and mechanic was a title for a person who repaired the equipment,” Hall wrote. “But it didn’t take me long to figure out that Operator and Mechanic were our last names, like Hatfields and McCoys.
“I also found out that just a few first names were used by all Operators and Mechanics. Stupid Operator and Dumb Mechanic. No-good Operator and Lazy Mechanic. Apparently both sides have known an Operator and a Mechanic with the first name Good, because each side is always telling the other that a Good Operator or a Good Mechanic could do the job better.
“The Mechanics also have some first cousins called Electricians. The Mechanics and Electricians feud among themselves, but they are allies against the Operators. And the Electricians have some cousins called Instrumentation Technicians. They claim to belong to their own clan because they work with milliamps and millivolts instead of amps and volts. All the members of the above families use the same first names as the Operators and Mechanics.”
Does it ring true?
That sounds like a pretty dysfunctional team environment. Has your facility experienced anything of the sort? Or are the treatment plant people at odds with any other group? Like the collection system maintenance crew? Or the utility commissioners? Or the City Council?
Anything that creates barriers between groups charged with running an efficient wastewater treatment plant can only be detrimental. Here, we stress the positives. Just as we like learning about plants doing well with technical innovation, we’re interested in facilities that are performing well on the people side of things.
So, what communication challenges have you faced? How do you go about building a cohesive team — from the front lines in the plant all the way to the administrative office and governing body?
Send us a note to editor@tpomag.com that briefly tells your story. I promise to respond, and we’ll report on some of the more compelling stories on these pages. I hope you’ve had a rewarding year in 2010, and I wish you all the best in the new year ahead.
