Page 16 - Jan-Feb 2021 Vol 38 No 6

VIRTUAL CONFERENCE: TECHNICAL SESSION RECAP By Xavier Pedeux and Mike Marino
Visual, Virtual Tools Solve
Real World Problems

Water and wastewater system operators
are discovering the benefits of using
virtual tools such as animations, drones,
and virtual town hall meetings to achieve
high value communication efforts,
efficiency, and innovation for their
projects before, during, and after they are
completed.

The perspective is completely different
than anything they are used to, and it is
crushing public relations problems as well
as challenges communicating internally to
boards, councils, and even staff.

Jacobs Engineering, the Program
Manager for the City of Chattanooga’s
Wastewater Consent Decree, has
completed several high-value and
high profile administrative, design,
construction, and communication
projects within the City.

These projects include provision
of public relations/communications
assistance as part of the consent decree
program management, facilitation of
aerial drone photography for historical
preservation, and introduction of virtual
tools for various purposes. Some of
these tools include virtual town halls to
provide community stakeholders with
a comprehensive perspective of their
projects.

Virtual tools can provide obvious
advantages for public outreach and
community education that cannot be
achieved through conversation, still
graphics, and typical ground-level
photographs.

In the past, animations have been
used in Chattanooga to describe exactly
what a sewer system overflow is, what
causes it, and how the City plans to
help reduce those overflows by building
aboveground infrastructure (which can
be met with resistance by pockets of the
community). For example, when the
City revealed to council members and
nearby communities where it planned to
install above ground infrastructure, they
quickly realized that the issues would be
controversial.

Even though the equalization stations,
or wet weather storage tanks, would
16 TPW January/February 2021