Good morning, and welcome to Don't fall behind. World class asset management for smarter public work webinar. I'm glad you've joined us for this great discussion today. I have just a few housekeeping items first. All lines will be muted during today's discussion. So, please submit your questions through the Q and A feature at the bottom of your screen at any time during the session. Presenters will answer your questions live at the end. Today's session will be recorded, and you will receive an email with a link to the recording. So let's go ahead and Oh, there is one more thing. We have some related assets, some resources that you can access, again, down at the bottom of screen, you'll see a widget that just says related resources, I believe. So, you've got some good information in there. So, feel free to take those those links and assets as well. So, let's go ahead and get started. Luke Anderson, strategic consultant, strategic solutions consultant here at Brightley will be our moderator today. Luke comes from a background in energy automation and HVAC controls. Has been with Brightley software about ten years. After receiving his FMP in twenty seventeen, Luke has focused on both sides of the asset management day to day operations, and long term strategic capital planning. Luke's current role as strategic consultant allows him to consult with civic leaders helping to establish clear and justified capital plans. Welcome, Luke, the floor is yours. Awesome. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you everybody for joining. Most importantly, thank you, Mary. Mary is going to provide us some absolutely killer insight today. I've had the pleasure of doing some run throughs with this. And every time we talk about the topics today, I'm taking more in different notes, so I'm very excited. So, Focusing on asset management really in the world that we live in today, with natural disasters, with our economic downturn our workforce turnover with everything we're dealing with. It's great strategies and great topics. So I'm gonna start by Mary. I'm gonna give little introduction. So I'm gonna read your little bio here. Mary brings significant experience, managing federally funded grant programs across the United States, as well as North Carolina. Most recently, here in state government managing twenty million in community development block grants. Infrastructure, and one point seven billion dollars in FEMA public assistance grants. She oversaw some COVID relief funds. As well as dual roles in both state and infrastructure program manager for the NC Office of Recovery and Resiliency. As well as a state operations lead for the North China division of energy man emergency management. So more experience than I could even pronounce in one paragraph. So very excited to have you here. Can we start Mary, I want to start pretty broad. I want, you know, if you don't mind, give us a kind of a just an overview of some of the challenges. Maybe give an overview of what this idea of asset management is, and we'll kind of jump into kind of what we want to talk about today. Sure. And thanks for the opportunity. I really enjoyed this topic. It's certainly very timely. We're headfirst into hurricane season. And having grown up in Memphis, Tennessee, which is on a fault line, the new mad revolt. And spent a lot of time in Oklahoma and other states we know that with this hurricane season comes straight line winds and flooding and rainfall, which is only increasing over time. But wherever you are in the United States, any disaster declaration starts out by states and county and all of the municipalities, public works, authorities, and other eligible applicants. The damage assessments, the damages to your facilities, to your infrastructure, down to pipes that are underground, or some local governments have a variety of assets, abilities. And I'm talking about a plethora But public works, as we know, is really the heart. That's how I look at it. At least the heart of a community, because when public works facilities public utilities reach the community in a way that works and is basically created or rehabilitated or rebuilt for true longevity that we know that that's the number one factor that helps a community have trust in the stability and potential for economic growth. So it really does lean a lot on public works. So we're going to talk about really three things, disaster recovery funds, how your impacts, damage impacts for your facilities, really make a difference for supplemental appropriations that go beyond FEMA. Public assistance, which is of course the infrastructure funding. And how there are opportunities in advance to understand what your priorities are, whether it is critical infrastructure as with public works, or buildings, roads, I mean, there's lots of different concepts of critical infrastructure. But whatever is locally owned and maintained with the right kind of insurance, oftentimes, national floodplain insurance program, the FEMA program that's sold by various insurance companies in so far as your community as a participant. Insurance we know is very important as well. And asset inventories can capture all of this, but it is the strategic asset management plans that define for federal agencies that have this disaster funding, what it is that's needed sometimes down to the zip code. And we'll get into that a little bit. So, we're gonna talk about those things today. Perfect. Yeah, and actually I think that's a good place to start right there. I'm gonna -- I want to do the poll in just a minute if I want to ask you this first. You mentioned two things that I think I hear about all the time, the asset inventory, right? Knowing what we own, but also knowing data about what we own. Right? I've got these things, and it's got these attributes, it's this old, it's used this way. But then you also talked about a actual strategic asset management plan. Can you talk just a little bit of an address on a little bit of the difference? I know we're going to talk more, but kind of what that means kind of comparing the two? I can. And we're going to talk about Mary's map, which was a very sad study, then what it is that allows FEMA the ability to better understand where your facilities are located, undergrounded facilities not so easy, but we'll get to that in just a minute. Because I wasn't much of a data person. I'm not trained in parsing data or coding or particular types of data analysis but what I know is that data proves cost benefits. And now, I am a sort of hybrid grant federal regulations policy, but particularly local government data nerd when it comes to how to prove these things, because you have them in an asset plan that's based upon the inventory. Reason. You've already modeled, for example, aging, lifespans. And you can prioritize based upon your tories, generally, what's a priority to you because we are used to as local governments. Folks are used to making these decisions, all right, this is going to cost x. We don't have the financing for that. So, what grants are we going to go for? And that's one of the things that we do in our work. And I suppose the most important thing is understanding that an asset management plan proves repair versus replace. And it doesn't more quickly and based upon facts from weather modeling in addition to the modeling that's already done from an aging perspective. An aging infrastructure perspective. No matter what, most people start with critical infrastructure when financial decisions have to be made. And inventories get you to a point but it's the strategic, more comprehensive plan that allows for certain types of modeling to be done. If you're in an earthquake area, earthquakes, richter two scenarios. Flooding is a problem everywhere now. And there are flood maps that are funded by state agencies and, you know, no one just got, well, last year it was announced that Noah received five hundred million dollars internally. This is not going to be a competitive grant to really expand coastal and inland flooding models, which can then be used by local governments, counties, public works at utility authorities to take their own systems and use those models. So, it's a really good opportunity, because using real data has only been something that has been underway for larger local governments and federal and state agencies over the past ten years. So, now is the time to think about that, especially with funding availability to do these kinds of plans. Perfect. All right. Well, let's push this first pull out here. That should have appeared for everybody. So we've got a few options on there. One, we've kind of defined what an asset management plan is. Click ed if you've already got one in place. Click B, if you feel like you've got a good idea of what you own and at least a good idea of when you want to replace it, right? Just kind of a schedule. It's not strategic. It's not integrating too much. But it's more than just having a list, and that's what C is. It's just having a list. Right? Maybe we have a list of our buildings, maybe we have a list of parks, maybe some major assets that we own, but we don't have anything beyond that. And then D, hoping nobody's going to click D, but fortunately, there may be a few. D is, is we don't have anything at all. We don't have any, any infrastructure or or assets in place. Or or processes in place. I'll give it a give it a minute here. I was gonna say there's a lot of local governments that don't. You know, they have -- I know it's unfortunate. I mean, yeah, you know, and one thing I'm going to put out there why folks are answering the question is, you know, I think we all know. Local governments, state agencies, federal agencies are taxed, and it's just difficult, you know, to get on top of asset inventories. But the nice thing is, again, we have funding available for that. For local governments do. Yeah. Alright. We'll get about half the people here, so we'll push it out here, keep moving. Okay, great. So about a third at that level of the plan, and about a third have the list And, yeah, then about a shared between the -- nothing and some sort of end of life replacement. So, a good mix. Yep. Good. Now, we will have another poll coming up kind of about, you know, so if you guys want to start thinking about it, kind kind of why why do you feel like you're in that stage of your of your journey? But I do wanna we'll keep keep going a little bit more with Mary. I'm excited to hear about this next next next before we ask that. But I want to talk specifically when we think about hurricane season, and not just hurricane season, it's it's El Dorreto season right now, isn't it? I mean, we're we're they're getting hit. It's all over the news, the entire southeast. It hasn't made it up to my area in North Carolina too much. We're getting some rain. But places are getting pounded. There was a softball sized hail in Texas. So talk a little bit with this, with this season of weather upon us. How does asset management specifically impact a local government, resiliency, recovery funding? How does it help them put them in a good place to get some of that handled? Okay. And again, I love this topic, and I really, really appreciate us doing this. So, local governments, as I've mentioned, all facility damages count. Essentially, at the end of the day, strategic asset manager plans tell a number. I'm sorry. Can I jump in real quick? When you say all facility damages count, I'm -- I grew up in HVAC. When I hear that I think about buildings, but you're talking about road whip, playground equipment, fence I mean, anything owned by the government, what what does that mean facility damages? Yeah. Please. I'm going to use the tornado as an example, because we can all get a mental image of a tornado we've seen them. If anything that is damaged that is owned by a local government or a public utility authority, underground above ground, and a lot of times the underground lines don't show damage for a few days, but FEMA gives you some time to collect those dams assistance. The onus is on the local government. Initially, they're called initial damage assessments before what's called a joint state FEMA damage assessment to come in and do some verifications. The local governments work with their typically county or if they're a sovereign tribal nation, or territory, the emergency managers that they know within their region or their area to roll up those damage costs. And that could be, there's -- they're called FEMA Public Assistance categories of work. A and B are debris operations and emergency protective measures. And sometimes that's enough, like in the state of North Carolina, the threshold now is right about eighteen million dollars for the governor to ask the president to have FEMA come to town and write grants -- directed grants to local government for roads, bridges, dams, levees, if they own them, and maintain them, which you know, we have the high hazard dam program, but I'll digress on that one from FEMA. We have parts locally owned parks, locally owned roads. Some states have county roads in North Carolina. We don't have county owned roads, either state or local. And it expands into public buildings, volunteer fire departments, fire and police stations, town halls, historic buildings that are in use. Okay. At the time of the disaster landfall, whatever event it is, some recent let's say, human adversarial events that occur. Now, it wasn't enough to get a disaster declaration, but some people went shot up an electric substation in one of our counties. And don't know, hopefully, that's not gonna happen more and more, but hope not a plant when it comes to that kind of thing. So disaster facilities for damage assessments, public works is always the correct one. But that doesn't mean that flooded buildings or buildings that have come down from tornado, schools, county schools, local schools, including those that are private are eligible for female public assistance. And all of those collective damages count. And all of those should be assessed as soon as possible. But, again, local governments can rerun-in kind of thin. So, having the inventory and knowing values for repair for twenty or thirty more years or find the funding to replace. Sometimes FEMA shows up and they have what's called four zero six mitigation funding, which is immediate funding. That if eligible, cost reasonable, and is shown to be, you know, gonna take care of business for the long term, go ahead, fema will write that mitigation into your project. And allocate those costs. Now, again, you've got to have requisite insurance in place, if applicable, and you've got to have maintenance So, hopefully, that helps a little bit about what is the facility. Perfect. Yeah, absolutely. So, and then, I didn't mean to digress yourselves. I apologize. But from the -- from the recovery side standpoint, having that plan and going through that, how do those two does having that plan? Obviously, it gives us a baseline of what would condition it was in, how to value it, talk a little bit about kind of how the asset may be implantized with that, please. Yeah. Right, right. So local governments, you know, are working hard. And For example, the EPA provides money to states to do asset inventories. That's great. The Department of Transportation and EPA are two federal agencies that have both shown that to have an asset management plan in place proves in advance of a disaster or right now in disaster season, you know, anytime that you decide you're going to put an asset inventory together, you can take it further. Like the Federal Highway Administration did and the EPA has done to show the cost benefit that fema is going to come to town and assess for any permanent work or I call physical facilities. Anything that's plotable on a map. They're going to look at all of the permanent work damages and say, okay. So, and I'm going to -- I have a client that I love working with. But there's a lot of aerial lines with public works facilities around the United States. And if there's straight line winds and trees come down on those aerial lines, then what do we do? So, FEMA is, female public takes what was damaged and are mandated to take it back in so far as it's insured and I won't keep repeating that, but maintained and insured as if it should be, if it's required to have insurance. They're supposed to take it back to the way it was the day before the disaster happened. But the four zero six mitigation adder provided by FEMA, I call it adder funding. It can underground those lines Why? Because FEMA doesn't want to keep coming back over and over and over knowing that we've got increased amounts of rainfall, longer disaster or weather events and stronger weather events. So, FEMA knows and subsequent annual competitive funds are intended for resiliency. And so, they will underground those lines. Can't go beyond a certain number related to the initial damage assessment, and then you get more in-depth after the FEMA State joint assessments that are done for your state or tribal nation or territory. But those four zero six mitigation adder funds can really add up. The next thing you know you're undergrounding the lines and you have to worry about them again outside of the maintenance. And you So from a, again, thinking I'm gonna kinda compare the asset inventory to the strategic asset management plan. If I have an inventory, and let's say something simple like a roof, right? Roof gets destroyed during the tornado. If I can show, if, you know, we show FEMA that roof was twenty five years old. There are FEMA's, without any other data, FEMA's gonna say, Well, roof is supposed to last about thirty years or twenty five years, so they're gonna give us some sort of value of that age of that roof. They're going to they're going to look at the cost to repair it, right? And also they include those. Right? That's right. Based on the day before. Now, I have a plan in place. That plan includes operations that cause maintenance, includes data. And it can show that actually we put a new rubber coating. We actually refurbished that roof last year, even though it's twenty five years old, it was actually in very good condition. Does that change what happens with FEMA and how they look at the value of that roof? Whatever is in place the day before the disaster is what FEMA is going to repair, provided that it's got everything, you know, the maintained, etcetera. But that's what FEMA repairs. And so for example, let's say you've got the great roof, but the windows, you're on a on a coast or you're in the mountains and winds are Does it make sense from a cost benefit analysis on the coast, for example, for FEMA to fund hurricane shutters for your business? That happens. You get the really fancy, extremely nice, expensive hurricane shutters know, but you do get the ones that need certain codes and standards. And that's happened all along both coasts and in the mountains, Colorado or, you know, the Rockies and out here the smokies. And so, that's part of resiliency, I would imagine. It is part of long term resiliency, and Yeah. And then there's those. And those are funds that are law, right? So, we have the Stafford Act. Won't bore everybody with that one. But the Stafford act is what allows FEMA to come to town if we have exceeded again in North Carolina the statewide damage assessment threshold of eighteen million dollars For the record, that damage assessment threshold is your twenty twenty census times one point seven seven. Dollars So, North Carolina is about eighteen million. And then each county has to hit their threshold. I've had conversations with a variety of different people in various areas of the United States, And sometimes, we don't get our damages collected, and that's where those asset plans come in place for more quicker initial damage inspections as well. Damage assessments as well for costs, which makes it a lot easier to roll up the chain as every state territory and tribal nation has in place from an emergency management perspective. So those asset plans know in advance, conditions, maintenance records, etcetera, but it is the asset plans that have priority cause projects that FEMA should go to first. That should be assessed first, where the project should be written first. And it may be that you already have the mitigation in mind. FEMA has to agree. Is it cost reasonable? Is it necessary? And will it provide long term negative benefits? So, that's that's that extra mile that an asset plan does. Interesting. So, and I think there's a lot more to the benefits of having an asset management plan teaching asset management plan, but there's probably one we can kind of hang your hat on, that if there is an instance of a FEMA interaction being needed to be done. Having an asset management plan is going -- it's going to pay for itself with the potential of the money you can get, because you're not Everything you just mentioned isn't happening if if FEMA walks in and there's no data. Right? You're -- Same to that. It makes it a lengthier process. People are -- trying to do, you know, so they've cut and shoved debris to the side of the road. And, you know, within a certain amount of time, it's expect did, say, thirty days, that you have your damages captured, your initial local damage assessments done. But how many local governments have the staff to do that? How many local governments know how to assess cubic yards of vegetated debris, for example. And where to take it, is it properly permitted? So, from a damage assessment perspective to keep it simple is the best thing. You know, and you do that by referencing your list, which gets us to Mary's map at some point. Again, very sad. I called out of here to go. Yeah. Yeah. Very sad. You know, and in advance of you know, outside of thinking about disaster recovery, storms, man made, vents, etcetera, we have that D plus rating for our infrastructure around the nation territories. And the goal was before COVID and still is. To get that to perhaps be. That's a long game. And I think that the mind steps at local governments or at least it's been my experience and the experience of a lot of colleagues that local governments are starting to understand, patchwork, doesn't work. It doesn't create confidence with communities. And there are ways to define at least a plan. It may be a thirty year plan or a fifty year plan. A lot of plans that are in place presently that I've reviewed for cities around the United States and some of the Canadian provinces show a hundred years. But you have a plan in place as opposed to, well, what do we need to do in three months? Or, oh, my gosh, we just had a tornado. And I'm not really sure what can be done. So, the onus is then on FEMA make all of those decisions for you, which, that's what they do. And FEMA people have been very helpful to a lot of us who now have this career in disaster recovery and grants. That being said, there is a shift knowing how taxed agencies are federal state and local government. There is shift to taking more ownership of your assets, understanding more about what you have and what you need, what you can finance, and what you're need funding for, whether it's a grant or a low interest long term loan like an SRF loan. So, you've mentioned Mary's map a few times. Can we -- can we dig into it? Can we -- can we hear the -- hear the story, if you tell us about it? We sure can. So back before hurricane Matthew in, I think, October of twenty sixteen. It gets a little foggy. For the record, we've had nine federal disaster declarations since Matthew, not including COVID, in North Carolina. And usually, we walk around our days, and we don't think about disasters, you know, multiple, overlapping, repetitive disasters, then all of a sudden an infectious disease event shows up. So, it's a lot that there are people that are minding the store when it comes to these overlapping disasters. Local governments for a very long time didn't have an idea about what their inventories were. And when I say inventories, I mean everything from, actually, like the public worksheet that's way out in the lower forty. Or for example, extremely expensive emergency rescue equipment, low flow pumps that were out on loan to another local government that wasn't tracked. And so a disaster hits and all of a sudden it's extremely stressful. And you don't know where your stuff is for lack of a better term. That's just the simplest way I can put it. So early twenty sixteen, I believe. FEMA trained states on their software called FEMA grants portal. And FEMA grants portal is a online tool, portal, for every local government, and I'm sure the majority of people on this call understand what it is. But Back then, FEMA Grant's portal was training states, and I went out with a colleague all over North Carolina. Lots of folks showed up to strungies. Because finally, we were gonna go from written project worksheets to online, fully transparent Here's what FEMA thinks you should get, yes or no to the four zero six mitigation adder, here's your insurance and you local governments go in and regularly update their insurance records. And all of the other items, maintenance records, etcetera. You can do anytime, day or night, twenty fourseven three sixty five. But before we had FEMA grants portal, when I would go to local governments with a colleague. There were folks that didn't have that list of of facility assets. And FEMA pays for a lot of things like FEMA will pay if records are destroyed. You know, and if there's anything -- they'll digitize records -- paper records that are kept in boxes. And so, of course, there's been that shift about data. Being available online in a way that provides the quicker facts that justify repair to your infrastructure after a disaster. Mary's map was local governments going to Mapquest or Google and printing off their jurisdictional is doing a screenshot in quadrants of their jurisdiction. And sometimes it was sixteen screenshots to make up their larger jurisdiction and putting x's where there was critical infrastructure and owes where there was less critical infrastructure according to the roads and to help FEMA get there and for future damage assessments, if people that you don't know show up to help you to come up with the damages for your actual permanent work or your physical facilities. So that was Mary's map. And it was helpful to jog memories before Matthew. Because when Matthew made landfall, there were local governments that said, they pulled out that map and were able to sit down and say, okay, here's our critical facilities. And then projects were written more expediently. But the data that is collected now based upon asset inventories and strategic plans. In so far as they model storm events, you've already got far more information than simply the location of your your infrastructure. Right? So, the inventories have age condition, maintenance records, but the asset plans with modeling, population modeling, weather modeling, various types of weather modeling that's already available to us. You can see what your financial position is. You will know quite rather quickly what it is that FEMA is going to fund, and then we talk about those supplemental appropriation, that also have to be proven. And in my mind, it is the local government, the regional public authority, utility authority, that helps set the standard and provides clarity relating to who deserves those supplemental appropriations. State funding, if a state has disaster re reserve funding. Technically, that's supposed to come in pretty quickly and assist with housing and certain types of credit infrastructure. But essentially, there's funds that's supposed to back clean up, clean up after FEMA leaves, including the HUD CBD DR, program. Depending upon the congressional appropriation, it takes congress some time a long time. Imagine if Congress got that data that states and congress got the data more quickly. It may take less time to understand infrastructure needs. And because they have to be the most impacted and distressed communities that are getting that third tranche of disaster recovery funding essentially the back cleanup for what FEMA doesn't take care of. Well, there was a question that came in. I was going to say that, but it's pretty well related you just mentioned about the inventory. The city reports buildings parks and vehicles with the NC League of municipalities for the liability charge. So, the items are listed. Do you suggest a more -- do a more in house type of Tory or kind of strategic asset management plan, they're trying to account for everything, but it's taking a long time. So, I'll use an example of the Federal Highway Administration. The Federal Highway administration, and the EPA have both implemented Inventories using modeling, flood modeling, depending upon what's most prevalent in your area or most likely in your area, knowing that it's going -- we're we're watching the trends, increase on severity, length of storms and tertiary, you know, benefits, or tertiary impacts, rather. They see quite clearly that what they have insurance for required to have insurance for, and what they're modeling, and what they're capturing is best held at the local level in so far as that state has jurisdiction fiction of those highways. So, in my opinion, with the link of municipalities and the insurance, it's always a good idea to make sure that what you can -- can do -- what you can afford to do -- because there are local governments that can't afford NFIP insurance. But if you are in the fortunate position where you are able to assess your own insurance needs based on the regulations for disaster recovery, so with the NFIP requirement in, you know, flooding -- flood the certain -- that flood insurance is required. I would advise that you at least review your local independence insurance needs. Outside of, I think what we're saying is that the legal municipalities provides insurance coverage if the person who asks the question wants to clarify that. And that's great. As long as the insurance coverage meets the regulatory standards, then great. But if you have a need for additional insurance on additional facilities that the league may not manage. I would consider exploring that. And always glad to have that discussion at another webinar, because there's a, that's, you know, there's an interesting topic about flood insurance and asset management as well. And I -- and the only thing I would -- I think, one I think I think it's important is, you know, buildings, parks, vehicles, especially buildings, identifying if there are critical pieces of those buildings, so we may have city hall. It might be worth it to break out and know what the agent condition, maybe the roof is, maybe the maybe the boiler and the chiller. Things that that, you know, like Mary keeps talking about critical. You know, if we wake up Monday morning, and it's broken. If that's a big deal, we probably want to keep an eye on it. And you know, something that people don't think about is parking lots. So, you got to tell them all, you've got the the courthouse or, you know, the school. Well, the parking lot, oftentimes parking lots will sit there for a long time. And parking lots can get badly damaged. And when parking lots get damaged or underground infrastructure pipes, become inundated with silts and burst, come apart at the scenes as it were, parking lot synced in. You start getting, you know, continual sync calls. That's the kind of thing where it may not show up for a while, but when you're doing your damage assessments, always think about what's under your parking lots. So, not critical, but can be really dangerous. Well, and expensive, if you let them go without taking the cheap patching and overlaying, then all of a sudden you're reconstructing a parking lot, and we're going to pull those cars. Exactly. And it's, you know, FEMA also wants to see issues nature based solutions, so we stop pouring concrete everywhere for continued water runoff downhill. But when you do your asset inventories, think about those things. Some people may think furniture needs -- and yeah, furniture. Fuma replaces furniture. I mean, they're not going to mitigate your, you know, uncomfortable chair to a Lazy boy, but you know, according to what is necessary for your parking lot or anything else, they'll pay to replace it. And if cost effective and eligible that parking lot also gets the consideration for real resiliency over the long haul. Absolutely. So, I'd like to, I'd like to actually show an example, Mary, of a model that was done. It doesn't include weather, but I think it's a good example, or whether actually be included. And I think it would be a need to show the -- show the group and then have you kind of talk about what it would -- what it would mean to include something like flooding. And flood mapping in this example, because it's a city that's right on the water, so I think it'll be a good example. Right? So, it won't be very long, but let's see if this will start up here. The weather modeling is something that I think is extremely interesting thing. And again, not always affordable, but, you know, we get there. Absolutely. So this is a city on the auto lake And essentially, the main road here that you see up here, it's all in fairly acceptable condition now. But what we're going to be -- what we're going to be doing now is we're modeling the life cycle of this, this is a stormwater infrastructure. And this is where -- really where I want to focus is right on the on the connection there with with the water, because it doesn't take very long for those assets, not just other assets, but specifically along that ridge to start to deteriorate and essentially reach a point where, you know, we're fifteen, seventeen years from now, sixteen years from now, we're so far behind in deferred maintenance and backlog of projects. There I mean, this is where I think a weather model would come in, because my guess is that with the rise in this lake or any kind of change in weather pattern, these assets may not even last sixteen years. Right. And essentially, this model is currently based on a very low budget. And that's one of the challenges. Yeah, go ahead. No, I'd like to I appreciate the simplicity of this model showing this, because I've seen some with universities that have done this or with large cities that have done this kind of modeling for all kinds of weather events that are so complicated to look at, it's not always the easiest thing to translate. So, what you're showing here is exactly, what is the annualization of this? So, you're starting with a little bit of red and then we're rolling into a whole lot red. And -- Mhmm. -- and what is the annualization for this? Is it a ten year thing? Or how This means I can pull it up here and I'll zoom in a little bit. Oh, I can't move down. It's a little hard to see. It's over a forty year period, and this gives you a breakdown here how many assets you have within that circle. So, you can see where that red is starting to really show up about year fifteen. Right. And I see that you've got rehabilitate and we're there, of course, if Yeah. And I mean, the replacement option is always something that local governments everywhere are thinking about. Because of the aged infrastructure, that d plus we've got. Right. Well, and this is also, this is the approach, this is the approach when we keep our current budget, which is severely funded. Right. Which is the other big problem and the other big thing with the management plan, as an asset management plan is is how do we identify you know, hey, what is the actual budget? How much should we be spending? And look at the difference, if we increase it to six twenty five, look how much more capacity work we're doing in that first ten, fifteen years. Right, and you can also, we can overlap various types of disasters in this modeling. There is -- there are grant funds available to do the asset inventories. EPA requires it. DOT has certain requirements for asset inventories being taken. But there's a lot of other, you know, infrastructure that doesn't have an obvious funding source for asset inventory. And that's where we talk about those competitive annual that are made available. You know, there's capacity and capability or planning grants that don't require cost benefit analysis. This a lot of people are aware of in grant applications, which can be very daunting for local governments But they're, you know, one of the things I enjoy doing is writing those grant applications. Construction grant applications almost always require a benefit cost analysis FEMA is rethinking that, because we know that there's a lot of local governments that can't hire somebody to do a cost benefit analysis. But the capability or capacity building portion of it can fund an asset inventory. For your local infrastructure. And FEMA wants us to better understand what we need to do, so they don't keep showing up over and over and over for the same kind of atmospheric events. That's right. That's right. Well, good. Well, very quick shout out to Mr. Rod Lovely. If you ever get a chance to work with him, he's brilliant. He is. He made these models. So, But good, so let me pull this back. So let's I did have couple of two kind of final questions. The bit more in wrapping, but I know there's a lot you've picked up over your experience at the federal local level. So, you know, I I never liked the the, you know, what tip do you like? So I always like to frame it this way. Knowing what you know now, if you could go back to the very beginning, and give a piece of advice to somebody that's at the very start with all that knowledge. What would that piece of advice be? So I'm going to say that, you know, I wasn't thinking about data at the very beginning. That's been a trend since I, you know, really started, you know, getting much more involved in this industry, if you will, if disaster recovery can be considered an industry. One of the things that I would would most advise is I'm going to go back to those damages estimates. I'm going to go back to that strategic plan. You know where your infrastructure whether it's x's and o's on a printed off quadrant map for your jurisdiction. Translate that into and asset inventory. On top of that, damage assessments refer to that asset inventory for those damage assessments do your prioritizations, because, like I said earlier, the decisions that are made federally for supplemental recovery funds are -- in North Carolina, fifty counties were included in Matthew. And the same counties were impacted for Florence two later. Other local governments in states around the United States and territories of the sovereign tribal nations, are experiencing different kinds of overlapping infrastructure, damaging weather events. So, the big thing for me is, locally, down to the ZIP code, coming together and providing those local damage assistance the chain to your emergency managers, knowing your emergency managers is very important. You've got some days to do it, but some damages underground don't show up for a few days. And you'll be prepared when FEMA and the state who are managing the FEMA funds show up to do the joint damage assessments and justify or validate what you've done provided you can get to it, right? And that's sometimes a stretch for local staff. But most importantly, those damage assessments inform other agencies, US Army Corps of Engineers, EPA, USDA, the Department of Commerce, the Economic Development Administration, what supplemental disaster recovery funding is needed, how much is needed, and where it's needed. And, yes, the state and feds make a lot of those decisions for us, but strategic asset plans that involve future conditions, including weather modeling and population growth, for example, or loss, help us, help the agencies that make the decisions understand, are we the most distressed, are we have we been devastated and incredibly impacted? Because I believe that it's those damage assessments that really inform early on what's needed and where. And so that's the advice. So I'm gonna open it up to Q and A. We had a few questions come in. So if any other questions do come in kind of ask them as they type them up. But relating to kind of what you just said, who pays for that? Who funds asset management plans and funds these these these processes of building these things. Okay. So It's a little bit of everything. Right? Right, right. And there are, so we have EPA grants. I mentioned EPA grants. And of course, that's for your water and sewer wastewater structure. Those are -- that takes you to asset inventories. There are -- some states have asset management plan directed appropriations for their local governments. Not everybody, but it's headed in that direction. The FEMA Brick Funding and you'll want to talk to your hazard mitigation grant grant. State content paired. GIS modeling, if it can be justified, And you, I mean, famous the ones going and recommending that we have these scenarios available for these plants. So we can plan right now, or very soon, knowing it's going to take a long time to get there. You have economic development grants, EDA, when you're thinking about economic development, whether it's planning or what you need to do related to population growth or loss, industrial growth or loss, businesses, etcetera. So, what I'll do is provide a listing of grants, because I do have that list. And what I'll do is for those that have attended. I'll just get the emails. And I will send out a listing of grant funded opportunity. Grant funding opportunities. You can also take those damages that you come up with and combine them into documentation data. That tell that nonfiction story for your states to consider. You know, what is it you need to do so you better understand, okay, here's our age infrastructure, here's how much spending on upkeep and maintenance, and we're going to be doing pass work for the next twenty years to get from a D plus to a B, we need X first. To start with the asset, inventory, the strategic asset management plan, and then the project prioritization. And oftentimes, federal branch require community buy in. And there are grants available to engage communities. So, you're not doing things in a way that makes your citizens wary of decision making. I've seen those community meetings really, really garner trust. And it's a total shift for meetings that can kind of become contentious, particularly around public works. So, there's a lot of grant all going. And then final question, then we'll have our final poll here at the very end. The final question, and I'll kind of summarize it here. How do we convey this to leadership councils, boards, people that control the purse strings? How do we convey this message? Because it doesn't it doesn't always seem to land. Right. To the people at the cop. So, when we I just mentioned community you're a citizen by them. So, a lot of times, public works is a mystery. Some of these public works as an example. To me, public works is a mystery. How does a lot of this work? I mean, I understand that there are valves and pump stations and things that move water to my house and collect you know, wastewater and move it out of my house. But we've done a lot of things because we've had no money or very little money historically. I remember one hundred thousand dollars in a grant was a big deal, you know, ten years ago. And now, we've had hundreds of billions of dollars in money from COVID, and in fact before COVID, the D plus to the B, right? Dropped on states and local governments to use for a variety of different ways. Community engagement is a really critical factor that gets you to trust. When your communities trust you, then you have to buy them. And when your councils and commissioners receive the phone calls, instead of, why is my utility bill going up? Because remember, there's local governments operating with tax revenues that are kind of based on the 1980s and not to what we need today to get the work done. So, to convince counsels, commissioners, representatives, that asset, you know, inventory and asset management plans in particular save in the long term Make sure you've got the community engagement outside of, you know, the most basic things that may go out in the mail. Make sure you have public meetings, invite those folks. And have the conversation, I'm always glad to provide what helps make that conversation easier and more influential. But it's a matter of all encompassing community engagement with the councils and commissioners on board at a certain point in time provided they're interested, hopefully they are. And that is what allows local government leaders to make decisions all right, do we -- do we patch that over there? Do we replace this culvert right now? Do we do X project? That we know we need to do, but we don't, you know, and say, all right, so now it's worth it to do a strategic asset management plan based -- based upon our inventory. It takes time, but it also takes trust. Well, good. Well, thank you. I'm going to push this loss pull out to the audience. If anybody does want any more information or needs specific help, please click there. Otherwise, Mary, thank you so much. Really learned a lot. I appreciate it. And I'll just leave that pull up for everybody if you do have a need for right now. Well, good. If you don't mind Tracy, you can wrap us up, and we'll call it a day. We're getting pretty good on time. Yeah, great job and great discussion. Thank you both very much, and thank everyone who joined us today. I hope you got a lot of this session, please do submit information into the poll that'll help us understand what we should present on our next webinar. So terrific information that you can provide for us. For any questions that we didn't get to, we will definitely answer those email, you will get a recording of this presentation in an email within twenty four hours of this presentation. Thank you so much again for joining us, and we hope that you'll join us again next time. Have a great day. Ridly.