3 minute read
Highways
By: Rodney Gerard
The Highways, Harbors, and Airports Divisions’ Storm Water Management Programs collaborated to host the 2020 Protect Our Water Conference on Wednesday, November 18, 2020. The Protect Our Water Conference is held annually to provide instruction on best management practices and how to minimize pollution in storm water runoff from construction related activities. In consideration of current restrictions due to COVID-19, this year the conference moved online, virtually bringing together the construction industry for a full day of storm water training. The conference welcomed approximately 500 attendees, including state and federal employees, contractors, subcontractors, consultants, and other municipal separate storm sewer system permittees. In addition to the 14 offered training sessions, attendees were also able to engage with 20 vendors to learn more about their prod-
ucts and service offerings. Finally, to encourage engaging with speakers and vendors on the virtual platform, HDOT gamified the experience by allocating points to certain actions including attending sessions, chatting with vendors, and downDirector Jade Butay issues a welcome message to the attendees of the 2020 Protect Our Water Conference. loading vendor documents. Prizes are awarded to top point earners, including our very own, Kevin Pang, from HWY-O! Mahalo to all of the speakers, vendors, and participants who made this virtual conference a success. If you missed the conference or would like to revisit any of the sessions, recordings The 2020 Protect Our Water Conference of the presentations can be was held using a virtual format to found at www.stormwaterprotect attendees from the ongoing hawaii.com from December COVID-19 pandemic. 18, 2020. For more information on the 2020 Protect Our Water Conference, please visit https://protectourwater2020.vfairs.com/. We look forward to hosting everyone again next year!
Highways
HWY-O(hana) - Challenge Accepted!
By: Maaza Mekuria
The HWY-A family wishes Chris de la Torre a tremendous future with HWY-O as he begins work with the HWY-O administration. He has accepted the challenge to assist the District Office and will be working with the Oahu District leadership, headed by Mike Medeiros. Chris’ short tenure at HWY-A (AP – Section) was very impactful to HWY-A’s performance. From day one, Chris was thrown into a very challenging assignment where he worked on the implementation of the Lane Closure system that is used across the Hawaiian Islands. This included creating innovative ways to make several presentation maps and user friendly web applications for lane closure data entries. Chris also travelled to other islands to train users and created automation scripts using the Python (not the charming snake) language to make the related processes more standalone and responsive to user needs. If you read the article written about a year ago welcoming Chris, you may remember that he is a member of the Hawai’i National Guard and has done tours overseas as part of his military duties. He will be missed at HWY-A,
however, there was a talk in the group about how to bring him back or at least use his services while he is still assigned at HWY-O, just a talk. This is where the “One Ohana”, not “One Oahu”, principle would come into play. So, we are looking forward to working with Chris from a bit of a chained link, but still a link nonetheless. HWY-A would like to show their Chris De la Torre embarks on his journey from Hwy-A to Hwy-O to face and overcome new challenges with the continued support continued support for Chris just as he has supported HWY-A this past year and a half and look forward to a continued working relationship. Highlights of some of the excellent work Chris did while at HWY-A may be found at the following links. Lane Closure Public Access (arcgis.com) , HDOT Highways Program Status (arcgis.com) and Lane Closure Conflicts Review Dashboard (arcgis.com). These are just a small sample of all the fine tools he built to help the One Ohana. Godspeed and good success to Chris as he closes a chapter and opens a new one.
