Post-Hurricane Katrina, designers and engineers were faced with the challenge of building an interim closure structure at Lake Pontchartrain to close the 17th Street Canal to storm surge prior to the 2006 Hurricane season. Meet the design team and take a tour of both the closure structure and the temporary pumping system. You’ll learn how the pumping system design has evolved to its current capacity of pumping 9,000 cubic feet per second and how it will prevent backflow during a hurricane event. The plans and challenges for constructing a new permanent pump station will also be examined. This is your chance to visit one of New Orleans’ important canal and pumping systems and see first-hand how the process works.

The Audubon Nature Institute’s family of museums and parks includes the zoo, aquarium, insectarium, research centers, recreational areas, walking trails, and a golf course. Many of the Audubon Zoo's structures and trees were built or planted by the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s.

Lying in the path of Katrina, nearly all of the Zoo and Park's 4000 trees were impacted by the storm. To efficiently care for its facilities, recover from hurricane damage, and be better prepared for the future, the Institute has adopted a proactive management strategy that uses tools and asset management technologies that document existing conditions and the locations of the Institute’s trees and historical assets.

Enjoy a multi-media presentation that will portray what the grounds and facilities looked like pre-Hurricane and the damage and challenges presented in the aftermath of the storm. Then, board a bus and visit the Zoo's grounds to see first-hand the progress made and learn how they have implemented a recovery plan that is restoring both natural and historical assets creating a sense of place that is valued by all who visit these beautiful grounds and structures.

Enjoy this opportunity to participate in an extraordinary learning experience! The City of Mandeville, Louisiana is a growing community of approximately 12,000 residents located north of New Orleans on beautiful Lake Pontchartrain. The lake and its surrounding basin play an essential role in the community providing an outdoor lifestyle that many would envy.

Witness first-hand how the City, through its innovative biological wastewater treatment plant and wetland assimilation process, is saving and preserving this essential ecosystem.
The learning will begin aboard the bus as you cross Lake Pontchartrain. Expert instructors will describe the history of the lake and point out the opportunities and challenges it provides Louisiana residents. Upon arrival in Mandeville, you’ll observe the treatment and assimilation processes and examine what the future holds for the Mandeville Ecosystem Restoration Project.

In addition to getting an in-depth look at the wastewater treatment and wetland assimilation processes, you’ll learn about the City of Mandeville Public Works’ award-winning Environmental Interpretive Program where students from grades 3-12 have the opportunity for real-life science field trips.

This workshop will begin with an exploration into the federal, state, and local drivers influencing government fleets to proactively find ways to lower CO2 emissions. Examine what legislation is on the horizon and the anticipated timelines for compliance.

Discover why customer and stakeholder education is so important to implementation of a green fleet program. Emphasis will be placed on how to identify vehicle emission targets and implement tracking systems that measure progress.

The Green Fleet Policy program implemented by the City of Olympia, Washington will be featured. This effort included retrofit of the entire of fleet of older diesel trucks and construction equipment with catalytic converters, replacement of 44 percent of the staff car fleet with hybrid-electric vehicles, use of wireless monitoring technology to change driving habits.

Here’s your chance to ask questions, determine what green fleet best practices could be implemented by your agency in both the short- and long-term; and network with other public fleet professionals who are grappling with the same issues that you are.

Standing in front of the room and clicking through your PowerPoint® presentation is NOT training!

Are you a public works content expert who has been tapped to train your coworkers or share your expertise at chapter-sponsored or APWA National workshops? Maybe you’ve recognized that you have a wealth of technical knowledge and skill but have not volunteered to share it because you lack the presentation skills to get your point across.

Take advantage of this special opportunity to be a better trainer. Learn how to adjust your instructional style and techniques to the needs of your audience, organize and plan your presentation, and present more dynamically so that your point is made and the audience is better able to retain and apply what they’ve learned.

APWA chapters that host conferences and workshops and/or are participating in APWA’s Public Works Institute program should encourage their speakers and trainers to sign up for this opportunity to improve their presentation skills.

Strategic thinking or strategic planning? – Strategic planning assumes a future that is predictable and results that are measurable. Strategic thinking assumes that change is a constant and that organizations need a sense of strategic intent to make effective decisions about developing conditions. The best organizations integrate strategic thinking principles into their strategic planning processes.

Take advantage of this opportunity to learn from public works leaders who have guided their organizations through major strategic planning and visioning processes. By strategically approaching the delivery of public works services and projects, they moved not only their organizations, but their entire communities to new levels of well-being and success. Using specific public works examples, they will give you practical advice on how to engage employees and the community into a planning process that leads to greater acceptance, appreciation, and effectiveness of public works services and initiatives.

Blogs, online magazines, webcasts, internet radio, virtual worlds – all at the public works professional’s fingertips. Take this journey into how the virtual world is being used by public works trendsetters to communicate, collaborate, and promote the profession. Pam Broviak, PE, Public Works Director and City Engineer for La Salle, Illinois, is managing a Public Works Resource Center using the Second Life virtual world to create engineering design templates that are not only 3-D, but can be examined by “picking them up” or “walking through them.” The possibilities for public works applications using Second Life and other virtual and social networking tools could be endless as we move further into the 21st century.

Sign-up for this workshop and participate in a project to build a virtual treatment plant in Second Life. We’ll be in touch with you prior to Congress to alert you to opportunities to participate in Second Life orientation events so that you have a familiarity with the technology prior attending the workshop. Have fun and learn too!

Sustainability means living, consuming, planning and building with the understanding that tomorrow is a direct extension of today, and then acting with the knowledge that all people and all of nature are connected to this effort. Stephen Coyle, AIA, LEED ND is issuing a challenge to public works professionals to identify opportunities for incorporating sustainable principles into all public works planning and development.

This workshop will introduce strategic and practical ways to meet the building and infrastructure demands of today without compromising the ability of future generations of public works leaders to meet future societal and economic needs for healthy, safe, and affordable communities. Steve will describe strategies that are time-tested, adaptive, vernacular, pervasive, and produce beneficial consequences in the long term. We desperately need this type of planning and engineering as we face the uncertainty of climate, economic, and social change.

Discover methods for determining and assessing the strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and constraints of various sustainable strategies and solutions and examine how these concepts are already being deployed by cities and towns just like yours.

Agency resources (staff, budget, capabilities) are stretched to the limit, yet public expectations for project results are high. This workshop will present case studies for both large and small agency projects. Discover how to identify projects that will fit into a cohesive infrastructure program that will get support from both the public and elected officials. Then, we’ll take you step-by-step through the components of delivering infrastructure projects. You’ll get tips for: determining project scope, estimating costs and establishing a budget, determining a schedule that will satisfy both internal and external customers, creating a community information program, developing cooperative relationships with stakeholders, establishing context specific processes to overcome challenges to the scope, budget, and schedule, and using GIS to support project implementation and documentation. You’ll also get insight into how to manage the agency cultural change that often occurs with a successful infrastructure program.