Several County Public Works Administrators and County Road Program staff recently attended the National Association of County Engineers (NACE) Annual Meeting/Management and Technical Conference in Wichita Kansas. This event brings together more than 450 County Road Officials to see and learn about the latest innovative technologies, share ideas with peers, and discuss challenges and solutions facing all counties. This year, Jocelyn Blake, County Road Program (CRP); Tom Fellows, Umatilla County; Mikel Diwan, Hood River County; Mike Bezner, Clackamas County; Chris Doty, Deschutes County; and Brian Worley, CRP Manager attended the conference.
Technical tracks and learning at the conference included sessions addressing Bridges and Structures, Pavement Preservation, Safety and Technology, Unpaved Roads, and Emergency Preparedness. Tom Fellows, Umatilla County, led the presentations and tracks dealing with Unpaved Roads, giving his perspective and experience in maintaining more than 904 miles of unpaved roads within his county system. Chris Doty, Deschutes County, participated on an Unpaved Roads Panel to answer questions regarding best practices and recent experiences using OTTO seal. The Safety and Technology track focused on Local Safety Action Plans and brought together pilot states in a peer to peer exchange to build their plans using crash and incident data.
Following NACE’s first ever “fly-in,” a meeting for Federal Officials and their staff with the Executive Board of NACE, leadership provided federal legislative updates including their agenda to advocate for reauthorization to the Fixing Americas Surface Transportation Act (FAST) before September 2020. NACE presentations will soon be available.
Contributed by: Greg Lang | IT Trainer & Communications Coordinator County Road Program