Weak morale and understaffing contributed to four system failures in five years.
of the utility to see why the city had weathered five major disruptions to water and wastewater service in as many years. The study focused on, the oldest and largest of AW's three plants, as its failures were central to four of these five events.
The audit, delivered to the city last week by the UT-Austin Center for Water and the Environment, found that although AW implemented many after-action report recommendations following the service outages,"weakness in AW's organizational structure and conditions at Ullrich" – particularly the lack of"effective leadership" and"adequate staffing" – could lead to future bungling.
One interviewee stated,"If you keep [Ullrich understaffed] you will definitely get another boil water notice." Another said,"There are things that have been neglected for 20 years. We prioritize, but things do not get done due to the high vacancy rates." Staff also"revealed a perceived inattentiveness to the day-to-day needs of the plant by senior management.
Though the audit goes on to recommend further emergency-scenario planning, stress testing, and increased preventive maintenance, it maintains that"the most pressing resiliency gap is that the organization lacks the staffing capacity to handle extraordinary events.
During last year's boil water event, Meszaros hinted at AW's staffing challenges, suggesting that critical information may not have been passed along at shift change, and flagging high turnover:"We used to have a lot of operators with 15-20 years of experience. Those days are gone." The audit notes that thesees the aging workforce and the challenge of talent attraction and retention as common for the water sector.
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