Winter maintenance is more than work plans, budgets, disasters and recovery. Your family plays a huge role in your public works career and public service often demands family sacrifice during times of crisis. Lots of times the two worlds of work and family overlap and sometimes collide. Mike Duffy is the Assistant Public Works Director at the City of Cedar Rapids, Iowa and Janis Duffy works for the State of Iowa Foster Care and Adoption Unit. During Mike's 16 years at the City and 10 years before that with the county they've raised children, survived community disasters, and family crisis.

They share their story, challenges, triumphs, and insights on this episode.

You might want to check out Engineer Your Success with Dr. James Bryant. James has been part of the winter maintenance community through his past role at Transportation Research Board.

If you're facing challenges with work - life balance please reach out to resources available in your community or through employee assistance programs available through your organization for help. You're not alone.

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Thanks for listening in and stay safe out there!

Developing an infrastructure project is series of compromises and tradeoffs and so often maintenance and operations considerations end up on the cutting room floor. Unfortunately, those decisions have implications that agencies have to live with for a long time. In the case of the GARS Intersection project in Fairbanks, Alaska everyone knew that snow removal was to be a significant consideration during the development phase.

Sarah Schacher, Transportation Department Manager for the Michael Baker International Alaska office, describes the process that had maintenance as stakeholder and shares some of the discussions and compromises that unfolded during the design phase that made this an outstanding project.

Learn more about this unique intersection design at: https://dot.alaska.gov/nreg/garsreconstruction/ and email Sarah to discuss their process at Sarah.Schacher@mbakerintl.com

Sign up for email notifications on future episodes and other communications associated with winter maintenance and winter weather management by clicking on subscribe on the Talkin' Winter Ops website at TalkinWinterOps.com

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A hundred and fifty years ago road departments leaned on the farmers next to the road to help maintain it and often times paid them to do so. As time marched on and road departments became DOTs with dedicated maintenance workers and tools and technology advanced there is still a lot of innovation that takes place in the maintenance garage.

On this episode we're talking winter ops with Indiana DOT’s Director of Innovation and Process Improvement Todd May. Trust and innovation are core values at the Indiana DOT and they have a program that encourages their employees to come up with ideas to work smarter and safer. Todd’s got plenty of stories and examples to share with us on this episode. If you want to find out more about innovation and process improvement at the Indiana DOT you can email him at ToMay@indot.IN.gov

Sign up for email notifications on future episodes and other communications associated with winter maintenance and winter weather management by clicking on subscribe on the Talkin' Winter Ops website at TalkinWinterOps.com

Thanks for listening in and stay safe out there!