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I'm gonna take a sharp turn to the left here. We've talked a lot about technology
engineering and science and I'm going talk about some of the very important
soft skills
that will be required for us to bring these plans to fruition.
Also, with asset management has become a,
I don't want to call it a catch-all, but it has become a very broad term
which includes a lot of
practices, technologies, tools
I want to focus specifically on infrastructure reinvestment.
So, infrastructure reinvestment is
the, is the requirement for this vast inventory of infrastructure that was
put into our cities
after World War II. All of the water treatment systems, all of the water
distribution systems, the sewer collection systems
our cities grew at a very rapid pace through the 50s, 60s and 70s
and now this infrastructure is nearing the end of its useful life.
Before long,
our customers are going to be asked
to pay to have this infrastructure renewed. So for us it makes complete
sense.
But if we take a look at our customers, I don't mean sort of the municipal
managers and councils, I mean the customers -- people at home who use our
service every day and barely even know that it's there.
They're going to be asked to pay perhaps a third, maybe even double of what
they're already paying now to get a service they've had for forty years.
So that's a pretty tough
thing to ask for.
What we haven't done a particular good job in is educating them why this is the
situation.
We can explain it to engineers. We can explain it to the policy analysts.
But our customers haven’t sort of bridged this gap yet.
So if you look at asset management
even if we were to implement the very best systems, the very best
management procedures,
the very best tools,
we aren't going to get around the fact that someone's going to have to pay this
big bill to renew this infrastructure that is already in the ground.
We're not going to deal with that with technology
we're going to have to spend some time
to engage in
Education, consultation, and communication with our customers.
Customer education.
This is the most difficult and the most lengthy part of the process. So what we
need to do is understand
our customers,
learn what they know about what we do
and begin to educate them on the service that we provide them;
the cost of the service,
and most importantly, the benefits of the service.
Sewer systems are classic, right?
When they work perfectly, our customers do not even know they exist.
When they malfunction, they know it in a second. So for most of us they've been
receiving a very, very high level of service and they don't know that you
exist.
So we start educating our customers
and I think then the mechanisms to do that's getting easier and easier: the
internet ah... brochures there’s a wide range of media that could help us.
We find that it can probably take a year, maybe two years to educate your
customers to the point where they understand enough about their system
to be able to engage in consultation.
So consultation is the next phase. That's when we can ask them
would you rather do it this way or that way?
Would you rather pay now or do you want us to borrow some money so we can pay it
over time?
We're not going to have to ask them, do you want to pay, because they'll have to.
Otherwise our systems are literally going to fall. But we can provide some information on
how would you like to do that and customers appreciate that.
They can't make educated decisions until they understand what it is that we're
talking about.
Okay, our customers have said
we understand now
and we agree that we have to do this.
Go ahead and do it.
Now we need to start communication and this is something as an industry I don't
think we've done a very good job of is.
How well did we do? What do we did last year? Did we meet our targets?
Here's something new that we're going to provide you.
And if we can start to communicate with our customers in a gradual and constant
manner,
we hopefully won't have to go through this process in another sixty years.
So if I look to the future to say wow, where do I see this going? Well what
I really see is our customers understanding what we do
how it is we do it may be a little bit they're not going to that interested in
this technology but they will be interested in the benefits
and I think what we need to do a better job of is
explaining to them how their life
has been improved and will continue to be improved and in fact
be even better with the services that we provide.
And uh...
with an effective process in that regard,
we’ll find that our
uh...
ideas and our technology and our methods for improvement will become accepted and
will will will
uh... customers will be more than happy to pay a very reasonable cost to get these
services.