If SD1’s Strategic Business Plan goal of workforce empowerment needed a poster child, it might just be the Stephenson twins.
John, who joined the District’s Collection Systems department in January 2006, and Jimmy, who joined the department a year later, are a testament that hard work and perseverance pays off.
John spent his first two years at SD1 working on a construction crew repairing a variety of assets before moving on to asset maintenance, where he has worked ever since. His initial work was as a member of a CCTV crew back when SD1 was focused on hunting down infiltration and inflow (I/I) in hopes of removing it from our system.
“I spent many an hour dye testing drains and down spouts,” John says.
When strategies shifted away from I/I removal, John stuck with the CCTV crew but began to do inspection work. Today he is the Contractual Services Team Lead, managing contractors who provide SD1 with supplemental maintenance services.
He is currently overseeing work by Robinson Pipe, which is working on a complex project removing more than 200 yards of rock from a 96-inch combined sewer pipe in Covington. They’ve been removing rock for three months and are only about halfway finished.
John says the volume of work is incredible and the process to remove the debris has been overwhelming, but once complete the line will be restored to full capacity.
In January 2007, Jimmy decided to join the Collection Systems team, initially in asset maintenance working on a Vactor truck jetting and cleaning lines.
Jimmy explained that back in those days the work was not automated. “Our daily work was assigned from a long list of continually rotating assets,” he says. “There was no scoring or prioritizing - just the list and a rotation order.”
He says a typical day started with finding your assigned assets in a system map book – a large bound blue book with hundreds of pages. “Nothing you could tote out into the field with you,” Jimmy says.
Once he located the asset in the book, the next step was to get the road atlas (yes a paper map) for directions to where in the service area he’d be headed for the day.
“We did not have laptops or tablets,” he says. “It was all manual, so I can honestly say that I have seen a lot of changes through the years.”
These days you can still find Jimmy working alongside his crews, but with the added duties of training and providing leadership as an Asset Maintenance Team Lead. It is a big responsibility – the most senior crew member on Jimmy’s team has only two years under his SD1 belt.
“The team is young but solid,” he says. “I feel good about them coming of age and becoming valuable employees of the District.”
Although it may come as a surprise to many, John and Jimmy aren’t identical twins. They grew up in Petersburg, Ky., and when asked what it is like to have a twin, both responded in unison: “It is all we know!”
Having a twin kind of runs in the Stephenson family. They have a set of uncles who are twins and a set of cousins who are twins. On top of that, they were one of six sets of twins in their elementary school, and they are one of two sets of twins in the SD1 asset maintenance group.
Over the years, John and Jimmy have worked hard to grow in their roles, and in typical twin fashion, career development opportunities happened almost simultaneously. Both said they have always wanted to move up, and with recent retirements and a new emphasis on workforce empowerment, they are happy to be taking on more of a leadership role.
As part of that workforce empowerment focus, both John and Jimmy are currently participating in a leadership development program through SD1. They say the training has been a positive experience so far and is helping them in their new roles, such as providing tools for interacting with staff to gain successful outcomes.
Both noted that recent efforts to improve staff retention – such as additional days off and selective use of four-day work weeks – are having a positive impact, and that they are happier now than they were before those changes were made.
John says if he could have any job at SD1, he wouldn’t change. He says he likes it where he is, working in a system he knows like the back of his hand and always looking for ways to improve processes.
In fact, it was John who introduced the cost-saving idea of using a 3-D printer to create camera parts in-house. While tracking the use of parts, he recognized the high cost of a frequently replaced part and suggested to Tony Fey that SD1 explore 3-D printing. Tony talked to Donnie Couch and Donnie enlisted his son, Colin, who had 3-D printing experience. John’s idea was implemented and will save tens of thousands of dollars this year.
As for Jimmy – if he could have any job at SD1, he says he’d work in Water Resources as an “electro fisherman” shocking fish every day.
Fishing is a Stephenson past time. Both John and Jimmy own campsites in Brookville, Ind., where their families like to camp, boat and fish. They also enjoy hunting together.
John still lives in his hometown of Petersburg in Boone County with his wife Melissa and their two children. Jimmy left Petersburg and now lives in California, Ky., with his wife Tracy, who also works at SD1, and their daughter.
John and Jimmy offer the following advice to new staff members: work hard and stick with it.
As emerging SD1 leaders, the Stephenson brothers continue to model that advice every single day.
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