As industry leaders, we need to continue to raise awareness of Public Works! Most people don't even think about who fixes that traffic signal, or who fills that pothole, or who brings drinking water to our homes, or where the water goes when we flush the toilets, or who fixes the police cars so they can respond to emergencies...and the list goes on.

From cities, counties, or state agencies to engineers, consultants, contractors, inspectors and vendors that work for these agencies, we are the men and women that make the quality of life better and improve our communities everyday by providing core services: streets, drainage, transportation, environmental protection, fleet maintenance, drinking water, wastewater treatment, solid waste collection, signs, street lighting, traffic signals, pavement markings, facility maintenance, engineering, emergency response, surveying and so much MORE!!!

This awareness starts with YOU as a Public Works professional! Just sharing what you do with your family and friends can make a HUGE impact. When I was the Public Works Director for the City of Palm Bay, I experienced the difficulties in convincing city leaders that Public Works was an essential service, just like Police and Fire, and that we needed more funding and more staff to provide the essential services to the city. We worked behind the scenes in making sure our emergency service departments safely got to their emergency without their vehicles breaking down, or without a huge pothole in the way, yet, I felt that they had a stronger voice. I decided that we needed to share with our community what their local Public Works Department did for them, as I was confident that most people did not know we existed. With this awareness, I hoped the community would see how we were part of their everyday lives, and hoped they would be our advocate to increase our resources, which in turn, would improve their quality of life. With those challenges in mind, we created a video that highlighted our services in Palm Bay and debuted it at our annual update presentation for our city council, then posted it on our website and shared it with everyone. I also shared the video with my friends and family, and was surprised to see how many of them knew I worked for a city, but had no idea what I did. Again, just sharing what you do with those close to you can make a HUGE impact!!

Public Works is EVERYWHERE, yet most people don't even know we exist. Let's change that and show people what we look like and what we do! Nowadays, everyone has a phone with a camera and easy access to their social media sites....Let's start a new movement and create #iampublicworks on all the social media outlets. When you are doing your normal, everyday Public Works thing that you do, take a picture and post it to your social media site with a caption of what you are doing, and with #iampublicworks to share with your network. Also, you can show your support on social media by supporting our Twibbon campaign at: http://twibbon.com/Support/i-am-public-works.

Show the world the AWESOME work you do for them!!