About to head into a meeting, Craig makes a quick video about the importance of long term planning and collaboration. And how it might not happen without a special effort!
Oh, and after the meeting Craig reports that it went very well and that among other things, the group put in place “a sustainable framework to coordinate long term planning (at least a year out) for public infrastructure maintenance, improvement, and replacement in order to save money and improve quality.”
Here’s what Craig says in the video
Hi everybody! Hey it’s Craig Freshley here. I am outside the offices of the Portland Water District. These are the folks responsible for supplying the city of Portland, Maine with safe, clean water.
Today I’m going to facilitate a meeting inside this building where we are going to bring together folks from the water district but also from the state Department of Transportation and also the gas company, the folks that provide natural gas to all the homes and businesses in Portland, Maine.
See, the thing is that when these organizations do infrastructure maintenance and improvement projects, it makes sense that they’re coordinated. If you’re going to build a new road, as long as you’ve got the road dug up, that’s the time to replace the gas lines, to replace the water lines, to replace the sewer lines.
Now these four different entities — gas, sewer, water, road — they get together and meet regularly to talk about specific projects, but what they don’t do as good a job with as they wish they did is long-term planning. And that’s what they’ve asked me to help them with here today.
Every one of these people is busy with on the ground day-to-day projects. By hiring an independent neutral facilitator to focus on long-term planning, to make sure that they are keeping long-term planning alive, they think that they have a better chance for the coordination of gas, water, sewer, and roads. Maybe I’ll check in later and let you know how it goes.
I hope that you help your group make good decisions today! Thanks for listening everybody.
