Christi Robinson is a Senior Project Manager for Schoel and a registered Professional Engineer in Mississippi and Alabama. With over 25 years’ experience in the water and wastewater consulting engineering industry and various governmental and municipal engineering roles from local to federal, Ms. Robinson is skilled in project management, water & wastewater treatment, collection, and distribution design, master planning, and municipal, industrial and development engineering. She is also passionate about meeting client needs as well as developing the next generation of water and wastewater professionals with a demonstrated history of both teaching engineering courses in higher education and mentoring in private practice.

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Abby Christopher is a staff engineer at Schoel in the Huntsville office. With a Civil Engineering Degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, she specializes in water and wastewater engineering. Her experience includes design of pump stations, collection systems, and hydraulic modeling of water distribution systems. The main goal of her career is to protect Alabama’s diverse and beautiful waterways from pollution by offering engineering services to municipalities and utilities.

Utility managers, engineers and operations superintendents are busy people, usually working hard to meet the needs of ever-changing regulatory requirements while managing growth. In a utility with a growing service area, there are potentially miles of water and wastewater infrastructure added to a utility’s assets each year. This new infrastructure is often constructed by a private entity and then dedicated to the utility upon completion for eternal ownership, operation, and maintenance. In a perfect world, the utility has ample time to review proposed construction plans and sufficient inspectors to keep a watchful eye out during construction to be sure that the finished product meets its standards. However, since the world is rarely perfect, utilities must often rely on developers and their engineers to produce a quality product with minimal oversight and some final testing for quality control. This presentation will provide recommendations for the development and ongoing maintenance of utility construction standards and specifications to meet the needs of the fast-paced, ever evolving industry with tips to foster valuable relationships among all stakeholders.