All right, welcome, everyone, to Innovation Flow podcast, where we talk about park projects and initiatives that are ongoing at South Platte Renew. I am happy to have the director of South Platte Renew, Peter Van Ryj with us today. Thanks for being here, Peter.

Thank you, Blair. I appreciate it.

I know you were on the inaugural episode from weftech, so. So it's good to have you back to do a little more talking.

Well, thank you for bringing me back.

Yeah. Right. We're here to talk about the utility diagnostic tool, which you kind of conceived. And we'll get into that story in just a bit. But maybe first of all, just introduce yourself to the listeners and tell us a little bit about your background and what you do.

Well, thank you. Yeah. My name is Peter Van Rye. I'm the director of South Platte Renew. I'm also the director of Englewood Water Utilities. So Englewood Utilities, and I've been here for about six and a half years, and in that time, we have worked to develop a real unique focus on innovation, which is parc. And that's what we talked about in the first podcast. And some of the things that have also come out of the park process, or actually it's under the PARC umbrella, would be this utility diagnostic tool. And that's what I think we're here to talk about today.

That's right. But before we do that, I want to ask you an icebreaker question. That is, if you could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, and who would it be, and where would you take them? It's got to be local because we don't have airfare money.

Yeah, I appreciate the budget consciousness of that question. That's good. Yeah. I thought about this a little bit and landed on Jerry Garcia.

Nice.

And I would take him up to Red Rocks Grill. I think there's some iconic Grateful Dead shows from the 80s up there that I was definitely too young. So I would love to revisit that with him up there.

Yeah. It could probably give you a tour of all the. The green room and all that. Got his name on the wall.

Yeah, probably.

Yeah. All right, well, good. That's a good one. I would like to go to. Go on that with you.

I'll bring you.

Okay, thanks. All right, so let's get into the utility diagnostic tool. We're going to talk to Ben Stanford later, who's working on the tool. But I wanted to bring you in because this is kind of your idea.

It actually came about. It's another colleague in the industry, Roger Austin, who's with Hazen And Sawyer. And you know how they say that all good ideas come from, from the back of a bar napkin while you're having a beer. That's where this came from.

Is that right?

Yep, absolutely. We were, we were sitting over the course of a number of times that we were grabbing a beer, we just kept pondering this question of how do you, how do you go into over overarching utility leadership in terms of leading all aspects of the utility and how do you even know what to focus on? There's the technical aspects of the utility, but there's also the, the non technical pieces and then the political pieces and, and the structural and, and there's all these aspects to it that, that I don't think that I. There's no guidebook of. Here's how you go into an executive level position in a utility and quickly discern how to focus on what, especially when you're going into a brand new space. And so when I came to South Platte renew six and a half years ago, I was presented with the same kind of an issue. And then four years, four and a half years ago when I added Englewood Utilities again, the issue arose there where I was trying to figure out quickly where do I need to focus my time and energy to make sure that we're doing the right things first, how.

Does this help the industry and what are you trying to do with the utility diagnostic tool?

I think the main thing that we're trying to do is we're trying to create a tool that's designed for an individual to accelerate the, accelerate the ability to prioritize. And so for a new person going into a leadership role in a utility, whether it be general manager, CEO, deputy director, director, something like that, those higher level positions that have cross functional, you have to have cross functional understanding in order to be able to execute that position. How do you know whether you should spend more time on people, HR related issues versus political issues with the counsel or the board versus technical issues? Because maybe there's a consent decree or some regulatory issues. How do you know where you should focus that time initially and what we worked on over the course of that. It probably was two years of, you know, brainstorming and you know, coming up with concepts on a napkin. Basically a, a targeted question interview approach to help an individual going into one of those roles over the course of a two hour interview with these very broad yet focused questions and ranking system helps the individual somewhat tease out from their own answers where they need to be prioritizing their time.

Yeah, kind of Like a how to guide going in on what you need to be doing, huh?

Yeah, it's a how to that is generally applicable across utilities, water utilities, but can be. The questions are designed such that they, they get at specific issues no matter what the utility is. So it's broad concepts that you have to understand in a leadership role, but it's being able to quickly drill down to how big of an issue is that, and is that my biggest priority issue when I walk into a new organization or not?

Okay. What do you think makes this project, this tool, unique and sets itself apart from others?

I think the fact that it's focused on an individual. So this is not about necessarily understanding the organizational need as a whole. There's a number of tools out there and assessments that can give you a comprehensive analysis of the utility as a whole. And those usually result in a report or when I've done this before, it's a three ring binder that, that has a number of areas that you can improve over the course of days, months, years. And what this is trying to do is this is trying to help a person who, who's going in to distill down all that, all that information into a, an action plan that they can implement immediately or within the first 90 days of their being at their organization to make sure that they're focusing on the right things first. And not necessarily it's contributing to the overall organizational growth and development, but it's truly targeted at that unique individual who's going into that role of leader.

Yeah. All right, well, thanks for coming by and talking to us about it. I've seen it and I think it is a unique, valuable tool that I know working through it, it has helped me a lot figure out kind of the lay of the land going in and also help measures it over time.

So, yeah, I think the other, you know, it's been great to be beta testing it for. We've been beta testing it for probably a couple years now. And then in that two years we've been refining, you know, the, the output from it. And what's another unique aspect of the thing of the, of the whole process is it's been, it's been a public private partnership, so we've been doing this, this development in coordination with Hazen and Sawyer. So it's Englewood Utilities, South Platte Renew, and Hazen and Sawyer all working together to try and, to try and crack this nut and accelerate understanding for a leader going into a new organization.

All right, well, thanks for taking the time out of your day. And stopping by Peter and being on the Innovation Flow podcast. We love talking to you and thanks.

Alright. Thank you, Blair. I appreciate it.

All right. To the listeners, we're gonna talk to Ben Stanford and do a little deeper dive. I am glad to have Ben Stanford here, associate vice president at Hazen and Sawyer today to talk to us a little bit about a tool that he developed or has been working on. But I'll introduce myself first. I'm Blair Corning. I'm host of the Innovation Flow podcast and also deputy director at South Platte Renew. So thanks for tuning in today and thanks for being here, Ben.

Thank you, Blair. It's a pleasure to be here.

Right on. Well, can you give us a little background about who you are, what you do and what you do outside of work? Maybe.

Yeah. I think that the best way to describe what I do at Hazen is I focus on innovation. So my first role was running our applied research program and really building up our water reuse practice. With that I took on our water reuse group and now I actually lead our digital services group within utility management. But it's all about innovative ways of thinking about solving utility challenges and this tool that we're talking about today is a part of that.

Nice. What about, what about background? What did you. Your PhD, is that right?

Yeah. So I started out as a. I was actually a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania. I lived there for three and a half years and taught. Taught chemistry in Swahili.

Wow.

While I was there, which was amazing, and then taught high school for another couple of years here in the US I decided to go back to grad school to get my PhD in environmental science and engineering, focusing on water quality and emergent contaminants. Ended up working for Southern Nevada Water Authority as a postdoc and then Hazen brought me on board to start their applied research program. It's been a great journey to get here. A lot of cutting edge issues that the water industry is facing.

Nice. It sounds like quite a varied background there. Tanzania high school kids and engineers. Which one's hardest to work with of those groups?

American high school kids for sure.

I figured that was it. I have one, so.

Me too. Absolutely.

All right, well, before we get started on this tool, I wanted to ask you an icebreaker question here. So if you could have dinner with anyone, living or famous, who would it be and where would you take them in the Denver area? We're not flying you out for that.

All right. Gotta keep it local. Really love this question and thinking about who that would be. Was quite a challenge because the list was long. There were a lot of people I'd love to have dinner with. Most of them are deceased, in fact, historical figures. So I finally landed on Hamilton, and I think the two, of course, the line from the musical about being in the room where the sausage was made, I think that would be really key insight. But I would love to understand what the founding fathers thought of really what they were trying to build for democracy and what each piece of the Federalist Papers and our Constitution meant to them and how they see it going today. And so then I thought, well, where would I take this person to dinner? And I thought of two options that are very different. One, Casa Bonita.

There you go.

Because I thought, all right, well, this is where America is today. Let's take a look.

You started here, Mr. Hamilton.

And then the other one is linger kind of on the other end of the spectrum, kind of downtown area with, you know, an old mortuary that's converted into a restaurant with a camper van on top that they've made a bar out of. And I thought, yeah, these would be quite interesting things for Mr. Hamilton to see. Yeah, that's what I came up with.

That is. That is awesome. I want to go with you now. Sounds like so much fun.

We'll set it up.

All right, cool. All right, well, let's get to the topic at hand here and take us through a little bit about this. What's it called, what's the tool, and what does it do that you've been working on under the umbrella of this PARC here?

We started this tool and I think I want to back up just briefly. I think Peter will have just talked about this, but backing up just a bit. The tool was created out of a conversation to try to understand how do we help new people in utilities achieve the most they can out of their role. This is specifically focused on senior level leadership. And our original version we called succession planning. And then we realized it wasn't really about succession planning. And one of the terms that Peter uses is succeeding the position. So how do we make those staff or how do we help those staff to understand the new job that they've just jumped into, to understand the utility that they're working for, the challenges, and how do we help them grow into that next utility director? So we built this tool through a series of iterations, obviously with yourself being one of our guinea pigs.

Yeah, I was a guinea pig on this.

Yeah, it was great. And all of the deputy directors across South Platte Renew and City of Inglewood Utilities. Through an iterative process, we came up with two approaches. One was to focus on assessing 12 core areas of utility performance from how that deputy director or senior level leader viewed it. And the second was focusing on that person and helping them really evaluate critically their individual understanding with the goal of, again, helping them to become the best leaders that they can be, to identify their gaps openly and to determine a path to fill those gaps through conversations, through reading, through attending meetings, whatever that may be. So, again, it's really about the person. It's about helping them succeed in the position that they've built and to deal with one of the biggest challenges in the water sector today. We. Which is workforce turnover.

Yeah. So part of it is an assessment of the strengths of a manager that maybe is just hired. And then part, there's a utility piece, too, to assess the strengths of the utility, or is that baked into the thing?

It's both. So we want to understand their view of how the utility is performing. So it's not so much a true grade, but it is a perception. And that perception is useful for a director, a general manager, to best understand where those weaknesses may be in the utility. The second part of that is less about their weaknesses and more about understanding where could they develop more skills. For example, an engineer coming into your utility may be solid on regulatory compliance, water quality treatment, or all of the issues at a wastewater plant, but they may not necessarily be good at financial accounting and understanding board relationships. So it's to help them. Yes, it's part of their weaknesses, but it's more about how do you drive towards strengths, how do we get them so they're comfortable across all 12 areas of that utility.

All right, and what are you calling this? Does it have a name?

We don't love it, but right now it's a utility diagnostic tool.

I know I'm always on you to try to get a name that pops, but none of them have stuck yet. So it's a diagnostic tool.

We've come up with funny acronyms, some good acronyms, some bad acronyms. Nothing really sticks. But it really is a diagnostic. It's a way to quickly come in and assess what's going on.

Yeah, that's why I don't like that name because it describes exactly what it is. You know, you need something, a little.

Something needs like a brand name of some sort.

Yeah. Well, how did you. So there's different attributes or categories that you kind of measure people's understanding of. How did you come up with those and where did they come from we.

Sat down together as a team and iteratively tried to break down the core elements of utility function and say, okay, what pieces do we want to create as large buckets? And we were doing this in response to some more comprehensive tools that provide thousands of questions that can take days and days to work through. And we wanted to do this quickly in a very focused fashion. So we ended up coming up with about around 70 or so indicators and group them into those 12 buckets that were really designed to within an hour be able to get through the entire list with deputy director or an assistant general manager and help work through it so fast. Focused and really about how to make a utility the best it can be.

Cool. All right, well, you've kind of went into this, but how does an organization like South Platte Renew or City of Inglewood Utilities or one of the thousands of other utilities out there, how would they use this? How would this be used by them?

I think the best way to use it is first to get a baseline of how the perception of the utility is amongst the staff and where staff can best help drive strategic planning for the utility. So that's one aspect, I think the second is getting the executive leadership team. And in the case of South Platte Renew, its deputy directors and other utilities would be assistant general managers, whatever the term is, helping them assess how do they grow themselves as a team so they can cross function across financial, across organizational, management, operations, team and talent, legal, all of those aspects. After you get a baseline, you can then start to have quarterly check ins and create goals, whether that's with the individual for how to grow their personal areas of development or for the utility to say, okay, we've got an issue with, for example, team and talent. We're not recruiting enough people or we're not retaining enough staff. So it can be used to help create very specific goals. The beauty of this is it's supposed to be, or it's meant to be very laser focused and streamlined so that you don't end up with 150 objectives, you end up with two or three items to focus on in the quarter. And so it helps you in the very little time you have to do all of the other things that you have to. It creates a space to say, okay, we're going to drive forward, even if it's just a few meetings this quarter, we can make accomplishments towards this goal.

Yeah, that is good. I like that. Because a lot of the time part of the challenge of management is finding time to do everything and usually improving yourself or Assessing yourself is not high on the priority list because you have 15 other things to. To worry about.

It's all about putting out fires. And this lets you take a step back from the fires and say, okay, I'm going to take a few minutes for myself today.

Yeah, well, good. How is the. How has the reception been? What have you heard from folks who have been, you know, through the assessment or have seen? I know you've done a few presentations at Utility Management Conference and other places, but what are you hearing about it?

We hear statements like, this is really new. This is something that hasn't been offered in the sector before. Yeah, this is different from what we've seen. And that comes back to the innovation part of what I love to do with my job, which is creating new spaces to see the gaps and to help create. And Peter Van Rye and Roger Austin, who really came up with this concept. For me, it was brilliant to say, okay, let's take this and operationalize it. Let's make it really happen. So working with you and the others here has been a ton of fun to see what we can do and how do we improve it. I think this tool's gone through at this point, probably close to 10 iterations. But hearing people in the industry say this is new is really empowering. I think from the South Platte Renew and City of Inglewood utility side of things, the challenge has been just to, you know, we can create the space to talk, but then to create the space for follow up, I think is the challenge. And so determining how to operationalize it, how to keep the director involved, how to, you know, balance this with all of the other things has been definitely a challenge. I think the other piece that was really interesting in one of our most recent meetings with Peter, and you were there for this too, was hearing that what we really need to be doing is focusing most of our time on the individual and less on the organization. I think we started out equally spreading our time between the two. And by reconfiguring how we do that, it's given us the ability to say, all right, let's really focus on building the individuals, building the strength of the team, building so that they can implement the strategic planning. And I think that's an important lesson that was good for us and helped, or I should say is helping us really refine and get this to the next level.

Yeah, yeah. I like the time feature. I don't know what you call it. Chronology. You can compare yourself to the last time you took it a year later and see where am I better at that? Have I slipped in the area of finance or do I think I know more or do I know? I think a lot of the times when I was doing it, you find out, well, the more you know, the more you realize you don't know that much about it. So it's one of those deals. It's good to compare yourself to the past. You.

And something new comes up and you think you've got a good grasp on it and there's some new regulatory challenge or some new personnel challenge or some new whatever challenge, and you go, wow, I don't think I knew as much as I thought I did.

Yeah.

And so it's a great way to reassess and go, okay, there's more of a gap than I thought here, which is a perfect part of being a learner and, you know, self critiquing to say, all right, how do I get better at these things?

Yeah. Well, cool. Let's talk a little bit about something off topic. A little bit. But it's on topic for you. I know part of your job, you moonlight as a college professor, is that correct?

That's right. I'm a. I'm a. What do they call us? I'm a scholar in residence.

Scholar in residence.

Sounds very, very high. Flute.

It sounds like you have. They give you an apartment over there.

I wish, right? Yeah. But it's at CU Boulder and I teach in the environmental architecture. Environmental engineering department. I teach water reuse in the fall and I teach a senior design class in the spring. Amazing time. As we said at the beginning of the podcast, I started out in education and this is a great way to bring that around and to give back to the students who are going to be my employees, my competitors, my colleagues, my clients. It's just a really fun way to reach back out to the community. And I love it.

Yeah. Well, good. Yeah, it seems like it would be a good gig. A lot of work, though.

I'm sure it is extra work. But last year, for example, we were able to bring in a project from South Platte renew as part of the student design class. And they loved it. Actually. They went to the Rocky Mountain Water Environment association, won the competition there, were able to go to weftech to compete, placing third in the competition. Just a great opportunity. So we really appreciate you all as utility also participating in the university and with the students.

Yeah, we love students around here. It's fun. We get new interns and you. They'll show up and I think, who's this? Who's this. It's like a little baby here, you know, Then you realize, oh, they're college.

Kids, they're my kids. Age.

That's exactly it. What is your assessment of our youth here, our college youth, are they positioned to take the reins here in the engineering space?

I'm definitely seeing it and I love their drive. You know, it's clear when you have a motivated student, they stand out. They're just head and shoulders above the rest. And when they step into the professional workplace, and I've seen it through working for Hazen and working for Utilities, people go, wow, that is a really great person and it's super fun to see that. And at CU Boulder, we're also seeing students who have an engineering undergrad, go through the Leeds School of Business and come out with a great array of MBA business management types of skills with engineering, which is great for us.

Good. Well, that's good. Yeah, it's, it's interesting. You're teaching the youth and then you're developing this tool for more senior level managers to improve.

Who knew?

What do you think? What do you think is different? You mentioned a few things, but maybe summarize. What do you think is different about this tool? I've seen other kind of frameworks through different organizations or different groups, but what sets this one apart from the others as far as the diagnostic tool for managers?

I think one is that it was created by utilities for utility. So with South Platte Renew and with City of Engleton realizing that this falls under that innovation umbrella, it's really a unique approach to it. I think previous tools have been very long, have been very detail oriented. In other words, we want to uncover every stone at the utility and find every problem. And this is more big picture. How are we doing in finance? How are we doing in delivery of capital? How are we doing in our staff and our culture and our brand? And so it creates a space that is less stuck in the details of interpretation or fact finding and more in the big picture, which is frankly where the executive teams need to be the big picture of what's happening at the utility scale. So I think that innovative approach, the buy utilities for utilities and the ability to think big picture rather than detailed really sets it apart.

Cool. Well, thanks for, thanks for being here today and coming by to talk to us a little bit about the utility diagnostic tool.

It's been a pleasure, Blair. I appreciate it and it's been really fun developing with you also. I look forward to continued work.

Yeah, yeah, it is, it is fun to get in the room, get on the whiteboard. And to break it down. But you're not done yet. There is a short end of show quiz, if you're ready. It's not really a quiz. So since you're associated with cu, I have a question here on mascots. I know it's bowl season, but Colorado has four colleges with live mascots. Can you come up with the four colleges and the mascots?

I can only come up with the Buffaloes.

That's it.

Because I have an engineering buff sticker on my cup at home.

Okay. Do you know the name of the. The buffalo. The live buffalo that runs it?

No. Who is it?

No, it's Ralphie. Yeah.

So now you're showing that I'm not really from Colorado.

We'll edit this out. We'll edit this out. All right, well, csu.

The Rams.

Yeah. They have Cam the Ram. Yep. And then I just learned this. Air Force. What? Did you know their mascot? Air Force Academy. They're the Falcons. And I guess they have a live falcon named Nova. I've never seen. I've never seen Nova. And then School of Mines is the fourth one.

Oh, yes. The. The Or Diggers.

The Or Diggers. But what do you think their mascot. Live mascot is?

I don't know.

It's a mini burrow.

Really?

Yeah. I think it calls a little core. A little carnivore, I think, or something. I don't know.

All right. But yeah, well, and I thought so. I could have maybe got. Had a better guess at those. I was thinking you asked about, like, CSU Pueblo and all the smaller schools.

Oh, yeah.

All the other state schools around Colorado.

Do you know all those?

No, but let's see. My. My son is at Fort Lewis College, which is the Skyhawks, so.

Skyhawks. Okay, I got that one. Adam State, where I went to school is the Grizzlies.

All right.

Yeah. And I don't know. That's about the only ones I know.

Okay.

There's a Mountaineers. I don't know if that's a western state or.

I was thinking West Virginia University. They're the Mountaineers.

Oh, really? I think there's Mountaineers in Colorado. I'll have to look this up.

We have Mounds.

It's fair. Yeah. All right, well, thanks for being here again, Ben. This is. This has been great, and I appreciate your time and all the effort that you put on this project. It sounds like it's just what park is all about, thinking outside the box, approaching things a little bit different and trying some new things. So I'M glad you're doing that.

Glad to be a part of it. Thanks, Blair.

All right. And to our listeners, thanks for listening. Thanks for viewing on the YouTube platform. Don't forget to like and subscribe on YouTube or give us a review 5 star rating on Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast player you're listening on. If you have suggestions for the show, guests or topics or ways to improve, you can put those in the comments on YouTube or you can email those to innovation [email protected] that'll be the podcast email and we'll get it there. But thanks for listening, thanks for watching, and thanks again. Ben.

Brilliant. Thanks, bud.